Star Vs The Forces of Sorrow
by TaintedScholar
Summary: While in Hekapoo's dimension, Marco learned that he was the reincarnation of Dracula. Now, dark forces are on the move and Marco has to deal with them, while also keeping his destiny a secret from his friends.
1. Chapter 1: Prologue

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or** **Castlevania**

 **For my first fanfic, I decided to write a crossover that nobody asked for or even thought of. Though this story is going to be more halfway between an AU and a crossover, it's mostly going to be a Svtfoe story with Castlevania elements thrown in (though, that might change later). It might be awhile before any true Castlevania characters even show up.**

 **This first chapter is fairly short, and serves as more of an introduction to the story than anything else. It starts smack dab in the middle of 'Running with Scissors' so if you haven't seen the episode in awhile you might be a little lost.**

* * *

Star hung up her mirror phone and looked at the ominous red portal. Her conversation with Pony Head had left her worried. Marco was on the other side of that portal. She took and deep and spoke with determination, "I'm coming Marco." and strode through the portal.

Star entered into a frankly nightmarish landscape, filled with dead trees and a smoking volcano in distance. After looking around for a moment, she picked a direction broke into a sprint, hoping that she was going the right way. Fortunately, her sense of navigation had been right and she soon found herself at the front door of Hekapoo's forge. It resembled a large tree stump with smoke billowing out of the top. Clutching her wand tightly, Star ran up to the door and kicked it open. Inside stood two people, Hekapoo and a large man, along with a creature that looked like the combination of a dragon and a motorcycle.

"Hekapoo!" Star shouted, leveling her wand at woman, "Where's Marco?"

"Star!" the man exclaimed in surprise, before running over and pulling Star into a bear hug. He was incredibly strong, and Star feared that she would be crushed. She struggled for a second before finally prying herself away. As air filled back into her lungs, she finally took a good look at him. He was tall, much larger than she was, and incredibly muscular. The open biker jacket he wore showed off his amazing abs and toned arms, one of which bore a tattoo. His face was handsome, and the scar over his left eye and the shadows of a bread on his face gave him a mysterious air. But Star didn't care how attractive he was, she didn't know him and he had just grabbed her. She pointed her wanted directly at his chest.

"Unhand me, beautiful stranger!" Star ordered, before suddenly realising that she had just called her by name, "How do you know my name?"

"It's me, Marco." He responded, taking off a tattered red hoodie that Star had originally mistaken for a bandanna, "See?"

"Marco?" Star asked, confused. She looked at him again, noticing the small yet unmistakable mole on his face, before her eyes moved downwards to the newer parts of his appearance. Namely his abs.

"Marco." She said dreamily, soaking in his new body.

"Oh man! We have so much to catch up on!" Marco said, clearly excited to talk to his old friend again, "I've learned how to sword fight, I fought an army of Night Creatures, I rode in a hot air balloon, I killed a god!"

Marco continued to talk, though Star didn't hear most of what he said. She was more focused on his abs. One can hardly blame her, she was a teenage girl after all, and adult Marco was easily the hottest guy she had ever seen in person.

"And then, I jet skied off a waterfall! Isn't that cool?" Marco asked, having finished recounting his various adventures, "Oh, check it out! It took me sixteen years, but I totally earned these scissors." he said, holding up a pair of sword-like dimensional scissors.

"Whoa, whoa, wait?" Star shook her head, his word having snapped her out of her stupor, "Sixteen year!? You've been gone from earth for like, eight minutes."

Marco just stared at her for a second before becoming angry, "Eight minutes!?"

"Yeah" Hekapoo spoke for the first time since Star arrived, "I forgot to tell you that time passes differently in this dimension. Not sorry."

Marco simply gave her an indignant glare. He had grown used to this type of behavior from Hekapoo during his time spent in her dimension. He thought back to the time when she conveniently forgot to mention that the Exploding Plains of Flendar, well exploded. He didn't hear the plains' full name until after he'd already been blown up. Looking over at Star, he probably should have realised that something weird was going on, considering that she hadn't aged at all since he last saw her.

"No, no, no, no. This is good. It means you haven't missed anything back on Earth. Come on, use your new scissors to take us home." Star eagerly said.

"Yeah, about that." Marco said, becoming very melancholy all of a sudden, "I'm not coming back, Star."

"What! Why!?" Star yelled in surprise, trying to wrap her head around Marco's words.

"A lot's happened to me Star, stuff I can't even begin to explain." Marco spoke slowly, looking at the ground and away from her, "I've changed, and I've learned things. It would be for the best if I didn't come back."

"Wait, but what about your parents? Or your friends?" Star asked, trying desperately to get her best friend to change his mind. The idea of Marco just leaving was horrible, "Or, me?"

Marco refused to look at her, he was worried he might change his mind if he did. He missed her, and his parents and friends. Being reunited with Star after sixteen years made prospect of never seeing them again seem much harder than it did before, when he first decided he wouldn't go home. Would it really hurt to go back? Marco turned to Hekapoo looking for some help with the decision before him.

"Don't look at me. It's your life." Hekapoo said with a shrug, before adding, "But you should probably head home, it'd be good for you."

Marco gave her a smile, glad to have have her support toward the idea of going home, before turning back to Star. She smiled in relief, happy that he was coming back. Marco took his scissors, snipping them experimentally then cutting open a portal to earth. He turned and walked over to Hekapoo and the dragon-cycle.

"Please, take care of Nachos while I'm gone." Marco said, before leaning down and hugging the dragon-cycle.

"She's in good hands." Hekapoo responded, patting Nachos.

"Adios, boo-boo." Marco said, kissing the dragon-cycle on the snout. He stood up and addressed Hekapoo, "Well, old friend, you really gave me a run for my money."

"Likewise. You're pretty cool." She said, before reaching behind him and smacking the back of his head and laughing.

Marco rubbed the back of his head, a fairly large bald spot having formed there from all the times Hekapoo had smacked him with her burning hands. "Thanks by the way" He said, "For, well you know."

"Don't mention it." Hekapoo responded. She then shot a glance at Star, "Seriously, never talk about it."

"I won't, believe me." Marco told her.

"Come on, Marco! Let's go." Star called from the portal, which she was already halfway inside. Their cryptic conversation had made her curious, and as Marco approached she asked, "What was that about?"

"Nothing." was the only thing he responded with. Star was tempted to press the issue but ultimately decided against it. Marco would never keep anything big a secret from her, so it was probably just something dumb and embarrassing.

"Okay." Star said, before waving goodbye to Hekapoo, "Bye." and then fully headed through the portal. Despite simply walking through the portal in Hekapoo's forge, she was practically hurled out of it into Marco's room, landing face-first on the ground. As she sat up, grumbling to herself, she heard Marco exit the portal behind her. She turned and looked at him, letting out a disappointed "Oh."

Marco had turned back into his fourteen year old self, though strangely enough none of his clothes changed. He looked down at his new-old body in shock.

"No! My hot bod! Where did it go?!" Marco demanded, staring at his somewhat chubby stomach. If anything, he actually looked more out of shape now than when he first left earth. Star responded by poking him in the belly, much to Marco's embarrassment as he quickly covered himself with his, now too large, biker jacket.

"I guess you're back on Earth's timeline now." Star said, giggling slightly. It was probably for the best that he changed back, it would have been pretty hard to explain to everyone why he suddenly looked like an olympic bodybuilder. Though she was a little upset that he lost his abs, she was also glad that Marco looked like how she remembered him. "But look on the bright side. You still have your bald spot."

"Seriously?! That's the thing that stayed the same?! How does this even begin to make sense!?" Marco asked in annoyance. Why on earth would the bald spot stay, while the rest of his body, including his scar and tattoo, vanished? His train of though was interrupted by another portal opening and Hekapoo sticking her head through it, laughing.

"You got the mark of Hekapoo, son!" she said, "Also, I'm going to be checking in on you every now and then. Arikado would be ticked if I didn't."

"I'm sure that's the only reason." Marco responded slyly.

"With that scrawny bod, yeah it is." Hekapoo said with a smug grin. She then ducked back into the portal which closed behind her. Marco looked back down at his body with annoyance. Star placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, who cares if you're fourteen again? That just means we have more time to go on adventures together. Especially now that you have your own scissors." She tried to reassure him. Marco glanced at his new dimensional scissors.

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Marco admitted.

"Of course I am. Now I'm gonna go make us some nachos." Star said as she exited the room, only to immediately poke her head back into the doorframe, "By the way, who's Arkeedoo?"

"Arikado." Marco corrected, "He's just a guy I met in Hekapoo's dimension. Pretty sure he works with Hekapoo."

"Huh, never heard of him." Star said. With that she left the room once more and headed down to the kitchen to attempt to cook. Star doubted that Marco had any nachos while in Hekapoo's dimension, she'd never even heard of them before coming to earth, so she figured it would be a good way to welcome him back to earth. She was actually a little worried about Marco, why would he not want to come home? Sure, a lot can happen in sixteen years, but he seemed sad about not returning. Like he wanted to, but couldn't for some reason. What could have happened that would make him feel like he couldn't come back? As much as she wanted to ask him about it, she decided to let him tell her when he was ready. It seemed pretty bad from the way he talked about it, and Star didn't want to upset Marco.

As Star reached the kitchen she made sure to grab a cookbook. She learned recently that she wasn't as good of a cook as she used to think, and she didn't want Marco's first experience back on earth to be him getting sick from her cooking.

-000-

Marco looked around the room, _his_ room he reminded himself. There was little familiarity here, just a vague sense of nostalgia. This was where he had lived since he was a baby, he grew up here, so why did it feel so foreign? Why did it feel like this wasn't where he belonged?

' _It's because I haven't been here in so long._ ' Marco thought to himself, ' _Yes, that's it, nothing more._ "

Marco told himself this was where he belonged, nowhere else. As he moved about his room, he recognised various objects, and remembered parts of life that he hadn't thought about in years. It felt encouraging, it reminded him of who he was before his visit to Hekapoo's dimension. Before his visit to the Castle.

Marco stopped in front of his desk, sitting on top of it was a laptop. He hadn't seen one in ages, as he stared at the QWERTY keyboard he realised that it had been awhile since he'd last seen something written in English. Hekapoo had clearly tried to write his name in English on the scissors she'd given him, but she'd screwed up slightly. Not that he was complaining, the fact that she even tried was touching. Turning his attention back the laptop, he tapped the touchpad, hoping that was how you turned it on. The screen light up, and Marco was glad that he hadn't forgotten something as basic as turning on a computer. His relief was short lived though, as he starred at the login screen.

"Password?" He spoke aloud. He wracked his brain to try and remember what it might have been. In the end, he couldn't think of anything, and admitted that fact to the room, "I don't remember my password."

' _It's not important. People forgot things like that all the time._ ' He reassured himself. Marco walked over to his bed and sat down on it. Looking to his left, he saw a half-eaten hamburger sitting on the bed. He must have been eating it before he was dragged into Hekapoo's dimension. He picked it up and took a bite, finding that it was still warm. Little to no time had passed on earth while he was gone. Marco took a deep breath as that realisation sank in.

That was good thing. It meant he could just go back to his old life, and pretend that nothing had changed. He could go back to being Marco Diaz, safe kid. He chuckled softly at the thought, he used to hate that moniker. But now, he was glad to have it back. He just hoped he hadn't made a mistake coming back.

His thoughts were interrupted by a series of barks and yips. The laser puppies ran up to Marco carrying their leashes in their mouths. They seemed so excited and happy to see him, even though he hadn't been gone that long from their perspective. Marco smiled at them, and picked up their leashes.

"All right. Let's go for a walk." He told them, walking out of the room with the puppies following along behind him.

' _I didn't make a mistake coming back._ ' Marco decided, ' _This is where I belong, because I am Marco Diaz. And I will never be Dracula._ '

* * *

 **In case it wasn't obvious, this story is going to be using elements from _Aria of Sorrow_ , with Marco filling the role of Soma Cruz. ****Exactly what happened in Hekapoo's dimension is mostly just going to be hinted at for the time being, though if you played _Aria of Sorrow_ you probably have some idea of what went down. But, I will warn you that Marco's ****experience was different from Soma's in certain areas. Also, I'm probably going to ignore most of the plot and lore from _Dawn of Sorrow_ , since I felt like that game kind of ruined the story of _Aria_.**

 **I'm sorry that this chapter was mostly a retread of 'Running with Scissors', but I felt it was important to go over this scene since it did change in this story. Next chapter will be something wholly original.**


	2. Chapter 2: Night Terrors

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or** **Castlevania**

* * *

A little over a week had passed since Marco returned from Hekapoo's dimension. Although he was having trouble adjusting back to life on earth, he was doing a surprisingly good job at hiding it. Marco had asked Star to not tell anyone about his trip to Hekapoo's dimension, saying that he didn't want to worry his parents and friends. While Star probably wouldn't have even thought to tell them on her own, the idea of actively hiding it from them made her a little nervous. She kind of understood why Marco wouldn't want to tell them, her parents would flip if they learned she spent sixteen years galavanting around another dimension. Whenever Star tried to talk to him about telling someone, he just told her that he wanted to forget the whole ordeal and get everything back to normal.

Recently, Marco had been spending most of his time studying. He had forgotten most of his school subjects while in Hekapoo's Dimension, and had a lot to catch up on as a result. So pretty much every free minute was spent either reading his textbooks or looking thing up on his laptop, which he fortunately had the password for written down.

When he wasn't studying, he was exercising. Sometime he did both at the same time, which Star had to admit was pretty impressive, even if he did look a little silly doing so. When Star questioned his new training routine, he told it was because he wanted his abs back, a sentiment that she could easily understand. Unfortunately, Marco's new schedule didn't leave him with much time to go on adventures with Star, much to her frustration.

And so, after yet another long, boring day, Star was asleep in bed. She was curled up in her blankets, snoring peacefully in her sleep, until a loud scream woke her. Star bolted upright into a sitting position, her wand held in front of her, ready to blast any potential threats. As the screaming continued, she realised that it wasn't coming from her room, and she realised who was screaming.

"Marco!" Star yelled. She jumped out of her bed, getting tangled in her blankets in the process. After falling on the ground, she managed to free herself from the bedding and dashed to the door of her room. Upon exiting into the hallway the screams grew louder, and she could tell they were coming from Marco's room.

Star ran down the hall, stopping in front of Marco's door. Angie and Rafael burst from their room with terrified expressions on their faces as they hurried to Star's side in front of Marco's room. Star raised her foot and kicked the door as hard as possible. It flew off the hinges, slamming into the far wall of the room. Star leaped into the room close behind it, wand at ready, prepared to rescue Marco from whatever horrible thing was happening to him.

However, she found only and empty room. Marco lay asleep in bed, thrashing and screaming. Star quickly ran over to the bed and started shaking him.

"Marco! Wake up!" Star yelled, "It's just a nightmare! Come on! Get up!"

Her efforts were rewarded with a punch to the face. After years of roughing it in the wilds of Hekapoo's dimension, surrounded by dangers, there had been quite a few instances where something tried to attack Marco in his sleep. That, combined with the stress and adrenaline from the nightmare, made attacking whatever was shaking him a natural reaction.

"Ohmygosh! Star!" Marco cried out, finally aware of his surrounds, "I'm so sorry! You startled me! Are you okay!?"

"Yeah, I'm cool. Just need some ice." Star said, rubbing her face. She waved her wand and conjured a bag of ice, and held it against her head. That was gonna leave a bruise. She turned her attention back to Marco, "What about you? Are you okay?"

"Me?" Marco asked, confused, "I'm fine?"

"Sweetie." Angie spoke up, concern evident on her face, "You were screaming in your sleep. Really loudly."

"We thought someone was murdering you." Rafael added.

"I was screaming?" Marco asked.

"And thrashing about." Star added, "Looked like you were having a pretty nasty dream."

"I mean, I _was_ having a nightmare. But was I really screaming?" Marco asked. They all nodded in response.

"Mijo, what were you dreaming about?" Rafael asked.

"Oh, uh." Marco scratched the back of his head, "Bears. I dreamed I was being attacked by bears."

Everyone paused to consider this new information. Personally, Marco found it a bit weird. His nightmares were usually alot more personal. Nightmares about his future, or his love life. As of late though, only one thing had any sort of presence in his nightmares, and that was the Castle and the things he learned there. Compared to to that, being eaten by bears seemed too simple. At the same time though, the dream felt bizarrely real, like was actually being torn to shreds. His thoughts were interrupted when Star spoke up.

"Okay, yeah. That makes total sense." She said, nodding her head sagely.

"But, I'm not even that afraid of bears." Marco pointed out.

"Well, you should be!" Star yelled, before growing very serious "A grizzly bear has top speed of 40 miles per hour, Marco. **40\. Miles. Per Hour.** "

Marco was forced leaned back as Star's face got closer to his own with each word, her eyes narrowing as she stared at him.

"I'll keep that in mind." He said nervously. Maneuvering around Star, he got up from the bed and walk over to where his door was laying on the ground. Picking it up, he turned to address them, "I'm sorry I woke you guys up, I'm gonna try to got back to sleep now."

"Are you sure Marco?" Angie asked, "You can stay up if you like."

"I appreciate the concern, but I'm fine." Marco told her completely calmly, "I have school tomorrow, so I need to sleep."

"If you're sure." Angie responded, trying to sound half as calm as Marco did.

"I'm sure." Marco told her, "Goodnight, mom. Goodnight, dad."

"Goodnight, Marco." His parents said. They left and headed back to their room, still concerned.

"Goodnight, Star." Marco said, herding his friend out of the room.

"Goodnight." Star said in a sing-songy voice, then continuing in a normal tone, "Oh, I have some spare bear traps if you'd like to borrow them. You know, to keep you safe from bears."

"I'm good." Marco replied, before trying to place his door back into its frame. After getting it in there as well as he could, he turned back to his bed. He stared at it for a few minutes before moving over to his desk, sitting down and turning on a reading lamp. He wasn't feeling tired right now, and he still had some schoolwork to catch up on. He would just stay up for a little bit, then go back to bed.

Marco didn't wind up getting any more sleep that night.

-000-

"And therefore 'C' equals... Seven! Seven? Yeah, seven!" Star proudly proclaimed. She looked around the classroom to find that the fabric of reality had stabilised, "Yes, I did it!"

Miss Skullnick looked at the chalkboard that Star had just been writing on, and the answer that she had transcribed.

"Wow. Yep, you did it all right." The teacher said, soundly mildly impressed.

"I know! I solved the problem!" Star said proudly.

"Well, no, I mean, it's totally wrong. But you tried, so it's a start." Miss Skullnick explained. The fact that Star was even participating in class was a victory for her. The girl might even learn something before the end of the school year if this kept up, "Nice job, Star. Now take your seat, please."

Star smiled and returned to her desk. Miss Skullnick looked to the rest of her class, trying to decide who she should call up next. Her attention turned to Marco, who was dozing off at his desk. That was odd, he was usually so attentive. Maybe Star was a bad influence on him.

"Mr. Diaz, get up here, it's your turn." Miss Skullnick said. Marco didn't respond, his head started to droop and it was clear he was beginning to fall asleep. Skullnick cleared her throat, and tried again, louder, "WAKE UP!"

Marco jumped to his feet screaming. He had managed to grab a pencil from his desk and was holding in front of himself as a makeshift weapon. As soon as he realised what was going on he dropped his pencil and stood up straight.

"Sorry about that." Marco said calmly, as he tried to ignore the fact that everyone was staring at him and his odd behavior, "What is it, Miss Skullnick?"

"Get up here and solve the problem on the board." The troll responded.

Marco quickly walked up to the board as if nothing had happened. Stifling a yawn, he picked the chalk and turned his attention to the math problem he had to solve. By now, most of the class had loss interest, returning to their bored, math-induced stupor, except for Star.

The bell rang shortly after Marco finished the equation. Pretty much everyone bolted for the door, glad to finally be free of this algebraic purgatory. Marco lagged behind, too tired to move at any speed faster than slow amble. A concerned Star approached him.

"Hey there, Marco. You feeling okay?" Star asked, "I don't think I've ever seen you fall asleep in class before."

"I didn't fall asleep, I'm just..." Marco paused to yawn, "Tired."

"You never went back to sleep, did you?" Star asked.

Marco considered lying and telling her otherwise, but it was obvious that he slept poorly. He let a long sigh, and spoke, "No."

"We have got to do something about your nightmares." Star said in a determined voice. Marco was about to tell her that she was overreacting, but someone else spoke first.

"Marco's having nightmares?"

Marco whirled around to see that Janna had snuck up behind him, and decided to insert herself into their conversation.

"Yep, it involved bears." Star informed her, much to Marco's annoyance.

"Huh, I think that might be the first non-stupid nightmare you've had, Diaz." Janna said. Marco gave glared at her which she ignored as she turned to Star, "Did you know those things have a top speed of 40 mph."

"Okay, that's it, I'm leaving" Marco said as he turned to leave. Star quickly ran in front of him, blocking his path.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait. But we haven't figured out how to solve your problem yet." Star said, "Maybe Janna knows what to do."

"I could hypnotise him." Janna offered.

"Star, I don't have a problem, I had one nightmare. You're making a mountain out of a mole hill." Marco said. He grabbed Star, and moved her out of the way, "Also, I'm not letting Janna do anything to my mind. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to head home and take a nap."

Marco exited the classroom, leaving Star and Janna behind. Star mulled over his words, was she overreacting? It _had_ only been one time. But it seemed really intense, what with all the screaming and thrashing. She decided to leave it alone for now, but if it happened again, she was going to put a stop to it.

"Bold of you to assume that I haven't already done something to your mind." Janna scoffed. She turned and looked at Star, "Why do you have a black eye?"

-000-

When Star and Marco got home, Marco immediately went to his room to lie down. Angie and Rafael were at the store, so Star had the house to herself. She decided to pass the time by watching some television in the living room. She was in the middle of watching a documentary about the migratory patterns of coconuts when she heard screaming coming from upstairs. A shame really, it had been a fascinating program.

"Oh no! It's happening again!" Star said. She jumped up from the couch and ran up the stairs to Marco's room. Once more, the door flew from it's frame and clattered into the room. She was about to shake him awake, but remembered what happened last time and stopped. Star aimed her wand directly at Marco's face.

"Frigid Wake Up Splash!" Star yelled. A stream of freezing cold water shot out from her wand, dousing Marco.

Marco let out an incredibly high pitched shriek as he jumped out of bed.

"S-Star! W-what th-the h-heck!?" Marco asked shivering.

"You were screaming again." Star said, concerned. Her tone shifted as she continued, "And last time I tried to wake you up, you kinda decked me in the eyeball."

"S-sorry about that." Marco said, ashamed. He stared at the floor, trying to avoid Star's gaze.

"It-It's fine. Don't worry about it." Star gave a nervous chuckle. She quickly switched topics, "So you were having another nightmare. Bears again?"

"Umm, no. It was actually lions this time." Marco said.

Star's face contorted into one of pure horror.

"Lions!? I don't have any lion traps!" Star yelled. She stopped and took several deep breaths in an effort to calm herself. She then turned to Marco with eyes full of conviction, "We've gotta fix this, now. You can't keep having nightmares every time you go to sleep."

"Yeah, you're right." Marco admitted. "But what are we gonna do?"

"Just leave everything to me." Star said confidently.

-000-

"I thought I already said no to this plan?" Marco asked as he reclined on the living room couch. His own bed was still damp from Star's spell.

"You got a better idea?" Janna asked. The main cause of his objections was currently sitting in a chair across from him, flipping through a book on hypnotism, "Besides, this isn't the first time I've hypnotised you."

"What." Marco asked, glaring at her.

"Guys, focus!" Star said sharply, "Okay Janna, what's the plan?"

"I'm going to hypnotise Marco into lucid dreaming. He'll be asleep, but he'll still able to hear my voice and talk with us. Then I'll try to help him control his dreams and make the nightmare go bye." Janna explained.

"How do I know you won't just make things worse? Or hypnotise me into becoming your slave or something?" Marco asked accusingly.

"Marco!" Star yelled, sounding offended, "Janna would never do something like that."

"Umm, sure." Janna said, looking off to the side.

"Ugh, let's just get this over with." Marco said in a resigned voice.

Janna lit some incense and took out a watch. Dangling it in front of Marco's face, she started to read aloud from the book.

"You feel very sleeping, but very aware. My voice is the only thing you hear." As she spoke, Marco's eyes started to droop. Before long he was fast asleep. Janna continued, "Where are you?"

"I'm at school." Marco answered.

"Classic anxiety dream." Janna said to Star, before turning her attention back to Marco, "Okay, what's going on?"

"I'm doing schoolwork." Marco said.

"Okay, and?" Janna asked.

"Nothing, I'm just doing schoolwork." Marco said, "It's history, by the way."

"Wow, your dreams are boring." Janna sat back down. This was disappointing, she had been promised horrific nightmares, instead she got this crap.

"Wait a minute." Marco spoke up, "There's this weird green guy, he just snapped his finger- AHH! SHAAARKS!"

Marco immediately started screaming and flailing about. Janna shot to her feet, and ran over to him.

"We gotta wake him up!" She yelled. She grabbed him and started to shaking him.

"I wouldn't do that!" Star shouted, trying to be heard over Marco's screams. Unfortunately, she was either too quiet or too late. Star ducked as Janna flew over her head and crashed into ground behind her.

"Frigid Wake Up Splash!" Star cast the spell at Marco again. Once more, he was awakened by icy water hitting him in the face. He fell off the couch and face-first onto the ground. He quickly scrambled to feet and hugged himself to try and stave off the cold.

"Y-you h-have got t-to st-stop doing th-that!" Marco said indignantly.

"Dude! What the heck!?" Janna yelled, clutching her left arm, "You just threw me across the freaking room!"

"I'm sorry! It was an accident." Marco said, "Are you okay? Do you need some ice?"

"I'm fine." Janna responded, "But, you so owe me now."

"O-okay." Marco said. While he didn't like the idea of being indebted to Janna, he felt really bad about throwing her.

"Let's get back on topic, people." Star said, "Okay, so what happened? Marco's dreams were perfectly normal, and then BAM, nightmare!"

"You said you saw a green dude right before the nightmare started?" Janna asked, "Can you describe him?"

"Oh, sure. He was diamond shaped, and he three eyes with a monocle over one. He also had a Luigi mustache. Oh, and stick figure arms and legs." Marco recounted.

"What the heck is-" Star's question was interrupted by Janna.

"It's a dream demon." She said as she was looking at something on her phone as she spoke.

"What? Like a succubus?" Marco asked.

"What? No." Janna said, confused about why _that_ was the first thing Marco thought of. She shoved her phone in his face, "Here. Read."

Marco took the phone and begin to read the webpage she had up. It was some sort of supernatural blog called 'Guide to the Unexplained', the page in question was on Dream Demons. He began to read aloud.

"Dream Demons are polygonal beings that typically live in the mindscape. They can enter into people's minds when they are sleeping and wreak havoc by causing nightmares, stealing secrets, and even possessing their victim." Marco recited. He stopped reading as Janna took her phone back, "Okay, so how do we fix this?"

"Oh, I know!" Star said excitedly, "You just need to stop sleeping."

"Star, that's not physically possible." Marco said.

"Sure it is, my mom hasn't slept in years." Star replied.

"Or, we could enter Marco's dreams and kick it out." Janna offered.

"You can do that?" Marco gaped at her, "How?"

"Simple, I just read this spell," Janna gestured to some text on her phone screen, "and Star and I get teleported into your head. "

"Dang it, Marco! You said there was no magic on earth!" Star said.

"Star, it's a spell off the internet. It's not gonna work." Marco said.

"Still you doubt me." Janna said, "Just lie back down while I get everything ready."

"Can I change first? My socks are soaked." Marco asked, looking down at his soggy figure.

Star and Janna made preparations for the spell, while Marco changed upstairs. Star was grinning from ear to ear, she was excited to see actual earth magic. She _knew_ it existed in spite of what everyone told her and she was right. Janna was similarly excited, though she wasn't nearly as obvious about it. This would be the first time she got to perform real magic. Star never let her use the wand, Glossaryck hadn't told her anything useful even after all the pudding she fed him, and the dead clown séance was a bust.

As they finished lighting the circle of candles they had set up around the couch, Marco came down the stairs in fresh clothes. He laid down on the couch and Janna quickly hypnotised him to sleep again. She placed a hand on Marco's forehead and Star followed suit. They looked each other in the eyes and nodded. Janna began to read the incantation aloud. The candles were snuffed out, and a strange energy began to fill the room. Janna finished the incantation and both her and Star's vision turned white.

-000-

The first thing they were aware of was Marco screaming. Looking around they seemed to be in a tropical forest. Ferns and moss covered trees surrounded them on all sides, and a thick mist filled the area. Star began to move in the direction of the screams but stopped and turned to Janna.

"Okay, what's the plan?" She asked.

"Wow, it actually worked." Janna said under her breath. Realising that Star asked her a question, she turned to answer her, "Oh right, first we gotta stop the nightmare."

"Got it." Star said, moving again towards the screams before stopping once more, "How do we do that?"

"We just find it and you zap it." Janna said.

Star nodded and dashed off in the direction of the screaming. Leaves and branches smacked her in the face as she ran. The cries grew louder until she burst into a clearing. In front of her was Marco surrounded by a pack of velociraptors. The dinosaurs were clawing and biting him, drawing blood with each attack. Marco thrashed about, desperately trying to avoid their teeth and talons.

As Star watched the scene, emotions started to bubble inside her, fear, sickness, sorrow, but most of all rage. She squeezed her wand so hard her knuckles turned white. Screaming in anger, Star charged the pack of raptors. Star let loose spell after spell, blasting the beasts through the air. Each one burst into a cloud of dream mist upon hitting the ground or a tree. A few of the dinosaurs charged at her, intending to put an end to her assault. Their plans ended in failure as spells struck them dead on, turning them to mist.

Once the last of the raptors had been destroyed, the land around her began to shift and warp. The mist grew thicker until a dense fog blanketed the area. The trees and foliage disappeared and the only thing that could be seen was the white void of the fog.

Star felt someone grab her shoulder, and she spun around to see Janna.

"Good job, Star. You stopped the nightmare." Janna said, "Now we just need to find the demon and get rid of it."

"Okay, but how do we do that? I can't see five feet in front of me." Star gestured around to the fog surrounding them.

As if on cue the fog began to dissipate, though remnants still clung to the ground around them. In front of them was the Diaz house, only warped and distorted. Everything was monochrome, and the house's proportions were off. The cacti that normally grew in the yard were replaced with skeletons impaled on pikes. The remaining fog seemed to take on the shapes of ghostly appendages that grasped at the pair. In the sky above, the moon was locked in front of the sun, creating a permanent eclipse.

"Whoa. This place is hardcore." Janna said, as she looked around, "I take back what I said about Marco's dreams being boring."

An explosion sounded from far off in the distance. It seemed to have come from the house.

"What was that?" Star asked. Janna shrugged in response.

"We should check it out." Janna said.

The pair walked up to the house. Star hesitated when she reached the front door. The house's normal door had been replaced by a pure black one with a magic seal drawn on it.

"Go on, open it." Janna urged.

Reluctantly, Star grabbed the ornate door knob and turned it. Upon doing so, the door swung inward. The inside of the building was far larger than its exterior, and every wall was lined with doors of various shapes and sizes.

"Alright, behind these doors should be Marco's memories." Janna said.

Star opened one of the doors. Inside was a memory of a young Marco trying to ride a bike while his dad held onto the seat to make sure he didn't fall. Star awwed at the sight before shutting the door and turning back to Janna.

"So, we have to check all of these doors to find the demon?" Star asked.

Another explosion went off, closer this time.

"Or, we could just follow the explosion." Janna responded.

They moved through the mazelike house, the frequent sound of explosions guiding them. Eventually they came to a grand door that was roughly where Marco's room would be in the real house. The door was painted red and white. Large golden letters on it read, 'Hekapoo's Dimension Memories'. Star glance between it and Janna nervously. She knew that Marco didn't want to tell anyone about his time spent in Hekapoo's dimension. Yet another explosion sounded, clearly come from behind the door. Star let out a frustrated sigh and opened it.

The area beyond the door was completely different than the rest of the house. The pair found themselves in a ruined castle corridor. Crimson light from a massive red moon filtered though holes in the walls, illuminating the hall. Black metal doors lined the intact parts of the walls. They gawked at their new surroundings until an explosion reminded them of their objective.

"Okay, we probably shouldn't poke around Marco's memories." Star said, "That's like, an invasion of privacy or something. So let's just follow the booms to- Janna!"

Janna was currently looking through one of the many door along the corridor. Inside was a memory of an older Marco, around his mid twenties, talking to a woman. She looked like she was roughly 40 to 50 years of age. Her hair was mostly black with some gray. She wore a long brown coat with a button up vest underneath. The two of them were standing in a fancy hallway with marble floors and a chandelier.

"Strange." The woman said, "I sense a dark power within you. Who are you?"

"I'm Marco." He replied, "Who are you?"

"I'm afraid I don't know." She said.

"What happened? Did you lose your memory?" Marco asked.

"Yes. I-" The rest of the woman's response was cut short by Star slamming the door close.

"Janna! Don't open any more of these doors!" Star said, gesturing about.

"Fine. Jeez." Janna responded, "So do you know why Marco was an adult in that memory?"

Star laughed nervously, "Pft, of course not. Why would, why would I know anything about that. Who's to say he was even an adult, you know it could just been an uh, you know one of those thingies."

Star's ramblings mercifully came to end when another loud boom went off.

"Hey Look! Another Explosion! Let's Go!" Star shouted quickly, before taking off down the hall. Janna gave the door one last glance before she followed Star.

-000-

Butterfly Castle was enormous. It was built directly on top of, inside, and out of a mountain, with the tallest towers rising higher than the mountain's peak. Visible for miles, the castle is one of the most well known landmarks in all of Mewni. It utterly dwarfed the town surrounding it. The guards, maids, chefs, and other staff numbered in the hundreds, sometimes in the thousands when there wasn't a plague going on. A maze of corridors, tunnels, walkways, and secret passages were used to traverse the castle, and getting lost was all too easy. The cleaning staff often discovered the skeletons of people who had failed to properly navigate the palace.

Star Butterfly had spent most of her life in this behemoth of a castle. And she could confidently say that her home wasn't half as large or confusing as Marco's mind castle. In fact, she was pretty sure that Quest Buy had smaller, safer, and saner floor plan. The mind castle was filled with rooms that looked exactly like other rooms, corridors filled with spikes and pits, and passages that seemed to expect you move through them vertically. The fact that everything seemed to be in disrepair didn't help, well everything except the death traps. They had nearly been killed by those on more than a few occasions. Even with the explosion guiding them, the pair had spent hours trying to find their way.

Eventually however, they found themselves at the foot of a grand open-air staircase. The staircase lead up to a lone keep that was suspended in the air. A massive clock tower stood silhouetted against the sky in the distance. As the two made their way up the stairs, they heard a voice coming from the top.

"Okay, the dynamite clearly isn't working. Let's try something else." The voice spoke with a refined British accent.

Star and Janna dashed up the stairs, eager to confront the source of the voice. Upon reaching the top they saw the green demon they were looking for, only he was wearing a welding mask and holding a blowtorch. He was currently using the torch on a colossal black and red door. Star aimed her wand at him.

"Hey! Put your hands in the air and step away from the big scary door!" Star yelled.

The demon turned off the blowtorch and turned towards them, flipping up the mask to reveal his monocle and mustache. He walked towards them, and as he got closer they realised that he barely came up to their knees.

"Who the devil are you? And what are even doing here?" He asked.

"My name is Star Butterfly! And we're here to kick you out of our friends head!" Star said.

"Janna." Janna added with a small wave.

"I'm sorry, but I can't leave til I open us this door." The demon said, gesturing to the door behind him, "I'm being paid alot of money for this job, and I'm not letting any obnoxious teenagers get in my way."

"Job?" Janna asked, confusion evident in her voice.

"That's right. The name's Nigma, Edward Nigma. Dream demon for hire." Edward said. He handed Janna a business card with his name, profession, and a phone number written on it.

"Wait, Edward Nigma? Isn't that a Batman villain?" Janna asked.

"I Had The Name First! Those Hacks Stole It From Me And Didn't Pay A Dime In Royalties!" Edward yelled. His green body turned red with anger. Star moved in front of Janna protectively and aimed her wand directly at him. He quickly cleared his throat and his body turned back to its normal color, "Sorry about that. Touchy subject."

' _Does every demon have a hair trigger temper?_ ' Star wondered to herself.

"So, why are you trying to open that door? What's behind it?" Janna asked.

"No clue, but it's locked up tighter than one of those plastic packages that are impossible to open even with scissors." Edward responded.

"Yeah, those things are the worse." Janna added.

"I don't care what's behind the door. I already took out your nightmare, and now I'm gonna take you out." Star said.

"Wait, you destroyed the nightmare!?" Edward said with panic in his voice. He looked around frantically, "Oh, that's bad! That's very bad!"

"Oh, I bet it is. Now get out of Marco's head!" Star said.

"No, you don't understand kid. We're all in serious danger! I set up those nightmares as distractions. Without them, they'll have notice my work. They're probably already on their way!" Edward yelled out. He tried to run away, but Star moved in front of him blocking his path, "We don't have time for this! Get out my way!"

"What are you talking about? Who's already on their way?" Star asked.

"Umm, probably that thing." Janna said, pointing down the staircase.

At the base of the staircase was a gigantic skeleton. It was missing it's lower half, and was slowly dragging itself up the stairs with it's arms. Clutched in one hand was a giant femur bone. Upon seeing it, Edward began screaming at the top of his lungs. Star lowered her wand at the skeleton.

"Mega Narwhal Blast!" Star shouted. Several large narwhals fired from her wand, striking the skeleton. Bones cracked and shattered upon impact, and the skeleton fell to pieces. A glowing blue orb flew out of the remains and began to move erratically through the air. Despite the danger having been neutralised, Edward didn't cease his panicking.

"You can shut up now, it's dead." Janna said, "Well, deader than it already was."

"No! It isn't!" Edward said.

On cue, the blue sphere flew back into the piles of bones, which reassembled themselves into the giant skeleton. Energy began to pool inside its ribcage, and the monster opened its mouth and shot a massive fireball at Star. Star threw herself to side, barely avoiding the flames. The fireball impacted into the door behind her, exploding. Star steadied herself, turning to face skeleton in order to re-engage it.

"Wait, this is a dream. We're not in any real danger right?" Janna asked.

"What?! NO!" Edward screamed, "If we die here, our souls will be forced to wander the dream realm for all eternity!"

Star paused. That was some very troubling information. The prospect of dying was already pretty unpleasant, but being stuck in limbo forever made it even worse. She needed to be careful, this wasn't just any normal monster battle. She needed to come up with a new battle plan, one that took into account the dangers of the situation.

And so, she picked Edward, tucked him under her arm, grabbed Janna's hand, and booked it out of there. They ran past the skeleton, it moved too slowly to meaningfully stop them. Its attempt to swing its femur at them only resulted in a section of stairs being smashed to rubble. They reached the bottom of the stairs and went inside the castle again, leaving the skeleton far behind them.

"Don't stop! There are more out there!" Edward screamed.

There was loud roar, and a manticore entered at the opposite end of the hallway they were in. Star saw the entrance to another corridor between them and the manticore and rushed towards it, dragging Janna and Edward with her. They ducked into into the corridor just as a gout of flame from the manticore filled the hall behind them.

As they ran down the corridor, more and more roars and shouts were heard. Star picked up the pace, eager to put as much distance between her and the source of the noises. The wall in front of her exploded outwards, and a gargantuan golden armoured knight slowly lumbered into the corridor. It stood easily twenty feet tall, in one hand it held a massive sword almost as long as it was tall, and in the other it carried a shield that covered most of its body.

"Strawberry Annihilation!" Star fired fruity flavored energy blast at the armour. The spell harmlessly impacted the knight's shield. The armour raised its golden sword and brought it down with a surprising amount of speed. Star managed to conjure a magic bubble around herself and her companions. The blade crashed into the shield, producing a sound similar to a thunderclap and causing the floor beneath them to shatter. The bubble cracked but managed to hold together.

The armour withdrew its weapon. Red energy crackled along the blade and it stabbed the sword into the ground. The floor erupted into the flame. The explosion caused Star's magic bubble shatter, and the trio was hurled into the air. Star slammed into a wall and toppled to the ground, to her side Janna and Edward also laid on the ground, groaning. The armour walked slowly towards her. Star picked herself up, to the protest of her aching body, and pointed her wand at the knight.

"Thermonuclear Butterfly Blast!" Star shouted. She generally avoided using this spell due to the amount of collateral damage it caused, but this was an emergency. Her wand began to glow as magically energy collected inside it. The armoured knight stopped in front of her, raising its sword once more. Star released the magic stored in her wand into the knight at point blank range.

Star's ear rang, and her vision was all blurry. As her vision cleared, she saw a massive crater where the armour had been before. The walls and ceiling had been completely destroyed by the blast, and the floor had caved away. The armour was now a full floor below them, though it was still relatively unharmed. Star forced herself to stand, there were more monsters and they were almost certainly on their way.

"Janna! Are you okay!?" Star yelled. She heard someone coughing and rushed over to noise.

"Present." Janna croaked out. Star helped her to her feet, and let Janna lean on her for support, "Where's Riddler? Did he die?"

"Don't call me that." Edward weakly said from a few feet away. Star picked him up again and the trio began to move as fast as they could manage.

They made their way to a long bridge that crossed over to another part of the castle. By now their bodies hurt a lot less, something about how metaphysical bodies work differently than real ones, Edward explained. The three of them were halfway across the bridge when a minotaur appeared at the opposite end of it. The bull monster charged towards them, covering the distance in a few seconds. It was carrying a two-handed battle axe that it swung at the trio.

Star tried to parry the swing with her wand. This proved to be a bad idea as the force of the strike slammed her into the ground. She rolled to her left just as the minotaur brought its foot down where her head had been moments prior. Star jumped to her feet and fired a rainbow blast into the minotaurs chest. The beast was knocked backwards, but was able to maintain its footing. It charged forward, axe at ready.

While Star and minotaur where fighting, Janna picked up Edward and ran towards the end of the bridge. Unlike Marco, she didn't know any martial arts, and was completely useless in a monster fight. Right now, the best way she could help was by getting out of the way. She felt frustrated at how useless she had been on this trip recently.

Star ducked underneath a swing of the axe, but was too slow to dodge as the minotaur kneed her in chest. Star flew backwards, crashing through the stone railing on the bridge's side. She grabbed onto the ledge of the bridge in order to not fall. Against better judgement, she looked down to see how far she would fall if her grip failed. It was at least a hundred feet down, but it only got worse from there. At the bottom was a legion of zombies. They were looking up at her, their arms extended upwards, ready to grab her if she fell. Star hoisted herself up, and immediately prepared herself to be attacked by the minotaur.

However, the minotaur's attention was elsewhere. It was staring down the bridge, directly at the fleeing forms of Janna and Edward. The monster unleashed an angry roar, and leaped into the air. It arced through the air, ready to come down on top of Janna and Edward. Star's mind raced, trying to think of a way to save them. She turned around so that her back was facing the two.

"Fantastic Exit Beam!" A green beam of energy fired from her wand, the words 'EXIT' written on the beam. The force of the beam propelled Star backwards at high speed. She slammed into Janna and Edward, sending them flying backwards with her. It was not a moment too soon, as the minotaur came crashing down. The floor beneath it shattered and collapsed under the force, and the minotaur fell to its demise.

Star's spell came to an end shortly afterwards. Without the beam propelling them forward, the three hit the ground, momentum causing them to bounce along for a couple dozen yards, stopping just shy of the end of the bridge. The trio stood up, ignoring the new aches and pains they were feeling. The ground beneath them shifted, and began to crumble. The minotaur had destabilised the entire bridge when it crashed through it.

They sprinted towards the end of the bridge. Star and Janna managed to make it, but Edward's tiny legs couldn't move as fast as them. As the ground fell away beneath him, he jumped forward. He stretched his arm out to grab the ledge and save himself. However, he failed to reach it and began to plummet towards the zombie horde below when someone grabbed his arm.

Janna dived forward and caught Edward before he could fall. She was on her stomach, her arm outstretched and holding on to Edward's as he dangled off the cliff. She made no move to pull him to safety though.

"What are you waiting for?! Pull me up!" Edward screamed.

"I don't know, you're awfully heavy." Janna said.

"WHAT!?" He shrieked. That wasn't true, he was barely heavier than air.

"I think my hand is slipping." Janna said. Though her grip didn't loosen.

"Are we seriously doing this right now!?" Edward asked. Janna didn't respond. Edward looked down at the drop below him. The zombies had all gather in one spot directly beneath him, they were piling on top of each other. Edward turned back to Janna, "Okay! What ever it is you want I'll do it!"

"Leave Marco's head and never bother him or any of my other friends again." Janna said.

"Fine! You have deal! Now pull me up!" Edward begged.

Janna finally pulled Edward up. He immediately moved as far away from the edge as possible. Star and Janna sat down to catch their breath.

"Hey, get up! We don't have time to rest." Edward said.

"Chill. The bridge is out. We're safe for little while." Janna responded.

They weren't actually safe. There were a plethora of monsters that could fly in the castle, and Edward knew this. But before he could explain this to them, the ground began to shake. Out of the chasm in front of them rose a massive object, a sphere made entirely of corpses stuck together. It moved towards them, bodies fell from the sphere and stood up when they hit the ground.

The girls immediately ran away, picking up Edward again as they did. They ran down a corridor too small for the corpse ball to fit through. It continued to follow them anyway, simply bulldozing everything in its path. The trio exited the corridor into a courtyard, and the sphere continuing its chase.

Roars and screeches filled the air as more and more creatures joined in the pursuit alongside the sphere. The three continued to run, even as projectiles began to fly in their directions. Star would occasionally fire off spells behind her blindly. If she stopped to aim she would probably be overtaken the by the beasts. She could tell that the beasts were gaining on her, though she didn't dare look back to see how close they were.

As they ran, Janna noticed that their surroundings looked familiar. She grabbed Star's arm and took a sudden left turn.

"The entrance is this way!" Janna yelled.

Sure enough, they had managed to make their way back to the ruined corridor at the beginning. Neither Star nor Janna were entirely sure how it happened, since they didn't exactly have a particular destination in mind when they were running. The only real place they had been going was away from the monsters, at the moment though, they didn't question it. Instead they were simply thanking their lucky stars they were almost out.

Moving as fast as their legs would carry them, they bolted towards the door that separated this part of Marco's mind from the rest. Fireballs, lasers, arrows, and all other manner of projectiles flew past them, impacting with the ground and walls.

Star reached the door and yanked it open. Janna rushed inside, carrying Edward. Star jumped through after her and turned around to shut the door. As she did she got her first good look at the monsters chasing them. There were dozens of them, in all shapes and sizes. Werewolves, demons, skeletons, armoured knights, bats, harpies, ghosts, and things she couldn't even put a name to. The horde moved towards her with frightening speed, murderous intent shining in their eyes.

Star slammed the door shut. Bizarrely, nothing slammed against it, tried to break it down or tear it open. The door just calmly stood there.

"We're safe." Edward said, as he sat against the wall, exhausted, "They never leave the castle."

"What were those things?" Janna asked, "And why are they in Marco's head."

"Spirits." Edward responded, "It's actually more common than you'd think. Though they're never _that_ dangerous. You should really talk to your friend about getting a demoncism."

Edward stood up, dusted himself off and readjusted his mustache. Was that thing even real? He turned to Star and Janna.

"You two hoodlums caused a lot of trouble. You interrupted my job, nearly got me killed, and dangled me off a cliff until I agreed to your demands. But, I did agree, so I'll be going now and you'll never see me again. Unless you want to hire, in which case give me a call." Edward said.

"One last thing before you leave." Janna said, "How do we get out of here?"

"Oh, that's simple. Just wait until Mango, or whatever his name is, wakes up." Edward responded.

"That could take hours though!" Janna said, "He hasn't slept since you started bugging him."

"Hey, that's your problem, not mine." Edward said, "Now that I'm out of that castle, I can leave whenever I want."

To demonstrate his point, he snapped his fingers and disappeared in a puff of dream smoke. Janna slumped against a wall, and huffed in annoyance. Despite almost getting killed five minutes ago, she was already bored. She hoped that Marco would wake up soon, despite knowing how unlikely that was. Star sat down next to her.

"You wanna look through Marco's embarrassing childhood memories?" Star asked.

"Sure." Janna replied. They got up and began to look through the doors until Marco woke up.

* * *

 **That took longer than it probably should've. I hit frequent writer's block in this chapter, mostly during the action scenes and descriptions. Also, Smash Bros Ultimate came out while I was writing the climax, so that didn't help.**

 **The characters from Svtfoe are surprisingly hard to write. They have very specific ways of talking. I hope I didn't screw up too badly writing them, I'm not terribly happy with how the dialogue came out in some places.**

 **This chapter was mostly filler, it's here to let me practice writing the characters and also to set up some plot threads.**

 **I'm sorry if the ending was too abrupt, I had a hard time figuring out how to end this chapter.**

 **Also, yes, Edward is a reference to Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls, in fact this whole chapter was basically a reference to Gravity Falls.**


	3. Chapter 3: Waltz in the Umbra

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or** **Castlevania**

* * *

While in Hekapoo's dimension, Marco encountered all sorts of bizarre and fantastical creatures. One notable monster was the mandragora. Technically, it is a plant with roots that resemble a human. When uprooted, it will unleash a high pitched scream. It is said that anyone who heard the cry would be driven insane and die. It was a little overhyped, as Marco had heard it and survived with his both life and sanity intact. However, it had been been one of the most painful things he ever experienced, and it had left him partially deaf in his right ear.

At current, Star was giving the mandragora a run for its money in the screaming department. Various glass objects cracked and shattered from the noise. Marco cupped his hands over his ears in an attempt to ensure his hearing didn't get any worse than it already was. Star collapsed on her bed as several liters of tears streamed down her face. Pony Head floated nearby, wailing almost as loudly as Star.

It seemed that their favorite dance club, the Bounce Lounge, was closing. Marco just stood their with an annoyed expression that didn't change even when Star moved over to him and started crying into his chest. In his opinion, they were massively overreacting. Marco barely even remembered the Bounce Lounge. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that he read through his diary upon coming back from Hekapoo's dimension, he probably would have had to ask Star what the heck the Bounce Lounge was. The only thing he really remembered about the place was Pony Head trying to kill him there. In other words, he didn't have any fond memories of the place.

"Hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves. It's probably not even closing." Marco said, patting their backs reassuringly, "I mean, since when has Pony Head been right about anything?"

"Oh, yeah." Star said, removing her face from Marco's hoodie. He cringed as he noticed that she had gotten snot on it. He quickly pulled a tissue out of his pocket and wiped it off.

"We'll go over and check it-" Marco was interrupted by a swirling red portal suddenly appearing, one which Marco immediately recognised. Sure enough, Hekapoo poked through the portal and grabbed Marco's hoodie.

"I need to borrow him." She said. Before Marco could say anything, he was yanked through the portal which closed behind him.

Marco tumbled out of the portal onto the floor. He picked himself up a scanned his surroundings. He wasn't in Hekapoo's forge, nor any other location that he was familiar with. The room was slightly larger than his bedroom. A couch sat up against the wall with a coffee table placed in front of it, and a wardrobe was located on the wall opposite to it.

"Glad you were free. I need you help." Hekapoo said. She walked over to the wardrobe and opened it.

"Actually, I was kind of in the middle of something." Marco replied, annoyance clear in his voice. Hekapoo didn't respond as she looked through the wardrobe, it was clear she didn't care that she had interrupted him. Marco sighed, "Where are we anyway?"

"My place on Mewni." Hekapoo answered, "This is where I usually take people. I got it after I forgot I had a guy at the forge and kinda left him there for several centuries."

"Uhh." Marco wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. Hekapoo pulled a black tuxedo out of the wardrobe and handed it to Marco.

"Here, put this on." She instructed.

"Why?" Marco asked, reluctantly taking the outfit. He didn't care for suits.

"We're going to a ball." Hekapoo responded.

" _Why_?" Marco asked again, more confused than ever.

"I got a call from Arikado, which almost never happens by the way. According to him, someone's going attack the Black Sun Ball." Hekapoo explained, "And, he has reason to believe it's going to be one of Dracula's old followers."

"Wait, I thought all of Drac's minions were killed, or trapped in the Castle?" Marco asked.

"Nope, a bunch of them escaped the Demon Castle War. Several of them rallied behind Graham Jones, but now that he's dead they're all off doing their own things. Now put on the suit. You need to look presentable for the ball. Unless you'd rather go as Princess Marco." Hekapoo teased.

"Oh, really? Sure." Marco thrusted the tux back at Hekapoo, her teasing completely going over his head. He really didn't like wearing suits, also it had been several years since he had been able to pull off a dress. Hekapoo facepalmed.

"No, I didn't mean that as serious option- Just put the suit on." She said, pushing it back towards him. Marco grumbled to himself.

He stood there awkwardly, eyes flicking between Hekapoo and the suit. After a few more moments of him not doing anything, Hekapoo spoke again, "Well, what are waiting for?"

"Can you leave?" Marco asked.

Hekapoo rolled her eyes and exited the room. Marco turned his attention back to the truly horrendous piece of formal wear. Reluctantly, he changed outfits. Once he was finally in the hell suit he followed Hekapoo out.

"Well H-Poo, how do I look?" Marco asked. Hekapoo stared at him for moment. For as much as Marco hated suits, he looked quite good in them.

"Almost passable." Hekapoo responded with a smirk, "Now come on, little boy. We've got a ball to go to."

"Really, we're back to 'little boy'?" Marco asked, indignantly.

"Well I can't exactly call you 'muscles' anymore." Hekapoo said. She reached out and squeezed his arm to prove her point. Marco quickly yanked his arm away, his face growing red.

"I-I'm working on that." Marco sputtered. Unfortunately, even under his new work out routine, a few weeks wasn't long enough to make a noticeable difference.

"Let me know when you have biceps the size of my head." Hekapoo said. With that she cut open a portal with her scissors and stepped through it, putting an end to conversation. Marco lightly poked himself in the gut -he'd managed to get rid of his tummy fat at the very least- and followed Hekapoo through the portal.

-000-

Marco hadn't been to too many balls in his time. The Blood Moon Ball was the only one, and that was a demon ball, so it was probably a bit different from most. So, Marco just planned on sticking close to Hekapoo, or standing quietly in the corner. The last thing he needed was some noble challenging him to a duel because he'd accidentally insulted them or something.

So, Marco and Hekapoo stood off to the side of the ballroom, watching the rest of the guests. Marco wasn't even sure what he was suppose to be watching for. Hekapoo only told him to keep an eye out for suspicious individuals, but there wasn't anyone here who really fit that description. There were no demons or monsters here, and racist though it may sound, those two groups made up most of Dracula's supporters. A vampire was the next likeliest candidate, but they were kind of hard to identify. You typically didn't realise someone was a vampire until you could see their fangs, and by that point it was usually too late.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Marco asked Hekapoo.

"Arikado didn't say." She replied, not taking her eyes off of the crowd.

"Speaking of, when is Arikado gonna show up?" Marco asked. Once he arrived, they might actually make some progress in their search.

"He isn't." Hekapoo said. A frown formed on her face as she spoke, "He never shows up unless it's super important. Heck, he never even talks to us unless someone's gonna die and he can't stop it himself. Right now, he's too busy hunting down the remains of Graham's cult to deal with this."

"So we're on our own?" Marco asked, "No backup and no idea what the threat is?"

"Pretty much." Hekapoo replied. Marco turned his attention back to rest of the room. Anyone could be Dracula's follower, or it could be none of them. They didn't even know if the attack was coming from inside the ballroom or outside of it. So all this crowd watching could be completely pointless.

"I still have no idea what I'm looking for." Marco said.

"Just keep an eye out for anything suspicious." Hekapoo said, her already short patience running thin. She started to walk away.

"Where are you going?" Marco asked.

"I'm gonna look around, make sure nobody planted bombs or something." Hekapoo said as she headed off.

Once she was gone, Marco slowly made his way to the corner of the room. Just keep an eye out for anything suspicious. How was he even suppose to know what was suspicious? He was in another dimension, he had no idea what was normal here. As if to drive that point home, a pigeon with human-like legs and a fancy hat walked past Marco. Maybe he'd get lucky, and the attack would just be a giant monster bursting in and not something he actually has to watch out for.

After reaching the corner, Marco leaned against the wall and watched the rest of guests. He'd always assumed balls had dancing, but right now everyone was just standing around and talking. Maybe the dancing came later in the evening. Regardless, Marco still didn't see anything that looked suspicious. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and Marco stifled a yawn.

"Hello there." A voice said. Marco almost jumped, how did he not notice someone approach him? He was standing in the corner for crying out loud. Turning his attention to the voice, he saw a tall man wearing a fancy purple jacket standing in front of him. He was far taller than Marco, easily over six feet. His hair was silver and came down past his shoulders.

"Did I startle you? I apologize." The man said, as he smiled warmly at Marco. He extended a hand, "My name is Lord Blackmore."

"Marco." He replied, taking the hand and shaking.

"A pleasure to meet you." Blackmore said, his smile growing larger, "Tell me, are you here with anyone?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm here with Hekapoo." Marco answered.

"Ah yes, Lady Hekapoo of the High Commission." Blackmore said, "I thought I saw you talking with her earlier."

Marco couldn't think of anything else to add to the conversation, so he didn't say anything. The two of them just stood in awkward silence. Well, awkward for Marco, Blackmore didn't seem to be affected by it. He continued to stare at Marco, making the boy slightly uncomfortable. After a minute, Blackmore spoke.

"I must be going now." He said, finally looking away from Marco, "The first dance will starting shortly. You should find Lady Hekapoo, you two wouldn't want to miss it."

Blackmore walked away, vanishing amongst the crowd as soon as Marco took his eyes off him. Music began to play, and people paired off and started dancing. Marco's boredom returned as he watched. He wasn't sure how much longer he could stand to wait. On cue, a red portal opened directly behind Marco, and since he had been leaning against the wall, he flew backwards through it.

Blackmore watched from a distance as the portal closed. A wicked smile flashed across his face. He turned his attention the dancers.

"And the game begins." Blackmore said.

-000-

The Black Sun Ball was an old event, dating back to the days of Leona Butterfly. Originally, it was a festival related to a solar eclipse, but it somehow wound up becoming an annual event. Over the decades, it went from being a large festival enjoyed by everyone, to a ball attended only by nobility. The ball was held at an ancient temple of the sun, carefully maintained over the centuries despite only being used once a year.

Hekapoo walk down a hallway, having just left the ballroom. She kept an eye out for any sign of trouble. So far, she hadn't found anything. If Arikado was wrong and nothing happened she was going to angry beyond all reason at him. He hadn't even bothered to tell her why he thought someone was going to attack the ball.

He never told her or the rest of the High Commission anything. He didn't tell them about Graham, he didn't tell them that Dracula would reincarnate, he didn't tell them that a solar eclipse could open a portal to the Castle, and he didn't tell them about Marco. Okay, Hekapoo hadn't told the rest of the High Commission about Marco either, but she at least had a reason. They'd crystalise him on the spot if they learned that he was Dracula's reincarnation, she wouldn't even get a chance to explain the situation. Even if she did get a chance to explain that he wasn't technically Dracula, they would probably still crystalise him. They were all terrified of Dracula and for good reason. Marco was a potential path to the Dark Lord's return, and anything that could potentially lead to His return would be stopped immediately. Hell, when Hekapoo found out that Marco was Dracula's reincarnation she-

Hekapoo shook her head as if she was physically trying to derail her train of thought. She didn't like to think about how she reacted to the truth about Marco. If Arikado hadn't been around, things could have gone very differently. She took a deep breath to calm herself, and focused on the task at hand.

Once it was clear that there was nothing evil happening in the hallway, Hekapoo cut open a portal to another section of the temple. She stepped through it into an empty room. As she searched it, Hekapoo tried to keep her mind from wandering back Marco and his relation to Dracula. She needed to stay focused. Arikado was almost never wrong about this sort of thing, and she need to keep her guard up for the attack on the ball. It was definitely going to be dangerous, that's why she brought Marco as backup. Well, that was one reason, she also wanted to make sure he was doing okay.

And she was thinking about him again. Dammit!

Hekapoo angrily cut open another portal, and entered it. She found herself in another empty room. After a quick search, she opened yet another portal. Hekapoo did this over and over again, portaling from room to room, growing more and more annoyed as she failed to find anything, and as her thoughts kept returning to Marco.

By this point, Hekapoo wasn't really paying attention to her surroundings. After storming through another portal, she immediately ran into someone. She took a step back and saw the person she just bumped into floating off in the opposite direction.

Now, most people would be rather freaked out to see someone float away like a balloon. But Hekapoo has seen this sort of thing before, and if this was what she thought it was, then it meant that the attack had already started. The person, a maid by the looks of it, was currently facing away from Hekapoo, and was also upside down. Hekapoo turned her around and was greeted by a pair of black soulless eyes.

"Ah, crap baskets." Hekapoo said. She quickly cut open another portal. Marco tumbled out of it and managed to avoid falling on his ass this time.

"We have a problem." Hekapoo said. She directed his attention to the balloon-like maid.

"Um, is she okay?" Marco asked. He lightly poked the maid and recoiled when she floated away from the force of the poke.

"No, she had her soul sucked out." Hekapoo said grimly. Marco quickly stepped away from the maid, feeling very uncomfortable standing next to it. Hekapoo continued, "Whoever's going to attack the ball is already here. Did you see anything weird, anything at all?"

"Well, I did see a pigeon with people legs, and a lady with a giant spider bite." Marco replied.

"No, not earth weird, Mewni weird." Hekapoo said.

"I don't know what counts as 'Mewni weird'." Marco said, making air quotes, "I mean, there was the Blackmore guy. He was kind of weird, kind of creepy too."

"Wait, did you say Blackmore?" Hekapoo asked.

"Uh, yes." Marco said.

"Did he have silver hair?" Hekapoo asked.

"Yeah?" Marco said, his confusion growing.

"Was he tall and wore a stylish purple coat?" Hekapoo asked.

"Yes. Do you know him?" Marco asked.

"Maybe." Hekapoo said, rubbing her chin in thought, "Did he strike a bunch of over the top poses?"

"Um, no." Marco said.

"It might not be the same Blackmore then." Hekapoo said.

"Okay, who the heck is Blackmore!?" Marco asked, confused and annoyed.

"A powerful shadow mage, and high ranking member of Dracula's army." Hekapoo explained, "He steals people's souls and sustains himself on them."

"I think it's probably the same Blackmore then." Marco said, gesturing to the soulless maid.

"I don't know, I've never once seen him _not_ posing dramatically." Hekapoo said.

They were interrupted by loud screams in the distance.

"What was that!?" Marco asked.

"We need to get to the ballroom." Hekapoo said.

She separated her scissors into two daggers and cut open a portal, then ran through it. Marco took off his tuxedo jacket, and followed her. They emerged in the ballroom, and took up their fighting stances. However, the room was completely empty.

"Where is everybody?" Marco asked, his trepidation growing. He felt a tug on his sleeve and turned to see Hekapoo staring at the ceiling.

Marco followed her gaze. Collected on the ceiling were the guests of the ball. All of them soulless and floating. The doors to the ballroom flew open and Marco and Hekapoo spun around to see Blackmore stride confidently into the room. He stopped and bowed in dramatic fashion.

"Lady Hekapoo!" He said, "It is a blessing to see you again! How long it has been since we last met."

Blackmore stood up from the bow. He then clutched a hand to his chest and gestured the other towards Marco.

"And Marco Diaz!" Blackmore continued, "We meet again. Anyone worthy of Hekapoo's company is sure to be a powerful combatant."

"You said he does this often?" Marco asked Hekapoo, ignoring Blackmore.

"The posing? Yes." She responded.

" **I'm afraid you are too late!** " Blackmore yelled, as he threw his arms out to his sides, not caring that his audience wasn't paying much attention, "I have already stolen the shadows of everyone at the ball. And now, I have become to powerful for you to stop!"

"Oh, for the love of- Shut UP!" Hekapoo yelled, "I didn't come here to listen your speeches."

"Then you still wish to fight me?" Blackmore said, arching an eyebrow, "Even though you will not be able to win?"

"I wouldn't be so cocky." Marco said, "It'll only make it more humiliating when you lose."

Blackmore stared at Marco before breaking into a fit of laughter. As he laughed his shadow stretched and grew until it covered the wall behind him. Its shape changed into the shadow of a great wolf-like beast. It began to peel itself off the wall, until a massive shadow monster stood behind Blackmore.

"Very well then. **I shall add your shadows to my collection!** " Blackmore shouted, striking another pose.

Marco and Hekapoo charged towards him, while Blackmore just folded his arms confidently. His shadow opened its mouth and spat large globs of darkness at them. The globs exploded into pillars of shadow when they collided with the ground. Marco dodged backwards to avoid the projectiles, while Hekapoo merely sped past them.

As she got closer, the shadow lunged forward, swiping a clawed hand at her. Hekapoo jumped over the attack, and came down on its arm, stabbing her scissors into it. The shadow recoiled from the attack, and Hekapoo backflipped away from the monster. After putting some distance between her and the beast, she shot a blast of fire at the shadow. The monster ineffectually raised its arms to try and shield itself.

Marco dashed forward, his sights set on Blackmore rather than the shadow. He jumped towards Blackmore and his fist shot towards the mage's face. It didn't land however, as Blackmore caught the punch. Marco immediately withdrew his arm and took a step back. He tried to roundhouse kick Blackmore, but the mage bent over backwards and under the blow. Blackmore snapped back into a standing position smiling smugly at Marco.

Marco lunged forwards, intent on wiping that smile off his face. But the shadow reached down and grabbed Marco before he could reach Blackmore. It squeezed, and Marco was crushed in the monster's grip. Snaps and cracks were heard as some of his bones broke. The shadow threw Marco with all its might. Marco flew across the room, creating a sonic boom, and slammed into the wall at the opposite end of the room. He fell to the floor along with pieces of stone from the now-crumbling wall. He tried to rise to his feet, only to collapse back to the ground and cough up blood.

A portal opened in the air above the shadow, and Hekapoo fell out of it, engulfed in flames. She collided with the shadow and created an enormous burst of fire. Hekapoo landed on the ground and jumped to the side as a glob of darkness impacted next to her. She continued to dodge around the battlefield, avoiding pillars of darkness that sprouted from where the globs landed. The shadow lowered itself to the ground and fired a black laser from its mouth. Hekapoo jumped over the laser, but while she was in the air the shadow slashed at her. Unable to change direction midair, Hekapoo was hit dead-on. She smashed into the ground, creating a small crater. The shadow opened its mouth to fire another dark laser at Hekapoo as she picked herself up.

Marco ran to Hekapoo's side, and called forth the soul of a Final Guard. Using the magic of the spirit, Marco created a force field in front of himself and Hekapoo. The laser collided with shield, and was stopped. Marco dropped the shield and collapsed in exhaustion. As soon as shield was down, Hekapoo unleashed another torrent of flames into the shadow.

"Marco!" Hekapoo shouted, concerned. She picked him up off the ground, "Are you okay?"

"Who me? I'm great." Marco said, immediately coughing up blood as soon as he finished speaking.

' _So, she was right. You do possess the Power of Dominance_.' Blackmore thought, staring at Marco. Chuckling, Blackmore placed a hand on his face and tilted his head back, then spoke aloud, "Well then! This has just become far more entertaining!"

The shadow lunged forward to try and bring its claw down on Marco and Hekapoo. Keeping hold of Marco, Hekapoo dodged to the side as the claw came crashing down. Hekapoo created a clone, handed off Marco to her copy, and turned back to engage Blackmore again. The clone carried Marco to a wall a safe distance away from the battle and leaned him against it. Marco called upon another soul, and his wounds slowly began to heal themselves. Unfortunately, he couldn't heal unless he stayed still.

Hekapoo slashed at the shadow with her daggers, which were now on fire. Now that Marco was safe, she was soon joined by her clone. Hekapoo created a dozen more clones and the group charged Blackmore. Before they reached him, the shadow slammed its fist into ground creating a massive shockwave of darkness. The shockwave knocked Hekapoo back, and snuffed out her clones. Hekapoo hit the ground hard, and before she could recover, the shadow grabbed her. It opened its mouth and began to inhale. Air rushed past Hekapoo into the beast's mouth, and she began to scream in pain as she felt her soul being forced from her body. Darkness swam across her vision and her mind began to dull, she was faintly aware of Blackmore cackling like madman as consciousness left her.

A bolt of lightning arced through the air and blasted the shadow in the face. The shadow dropped Hekapoo as more bolts struck it. Hekapoo landed in a heap, groaning softly. Blackmore looked for the source of the lightning and saw Marco slumped against a wall, his hand outstretched and electricity crackling between his fingers. Marco glared at Blackmore, eyes full of hatred and murderous intent. He had rested long enough, Marco decided. He charged towards the mage, trying to ignore the pain that every step brought.

As Marco got closer the shadow spat more globs of darkness at him. Marco dashed around them, closing the distance between him and Blackmore. The shadow lunged forward, slashing at Marco with its claws. Marco leaped over the attack, and the beast shot its other hand towards him while he was in the air. However, Marco _could_ change direction midair, and shot downwards towards Blackmore like a meteor. Marco's foot slammed into Blackmore's chest, and he kicked off sending them both flying backwards. Marco landed gracefully on his feet, while Blackmore rolled across the floor. Blackmore rose to his feet and strode towards Marco. Marco charged him again and the shadow raised its fist, preparing to create another shockwave.

But it never got the chance. A massive burst of flame exploded in its face, sending the beast reeling back. Hekapoo smirked as she rose shakily, still recovering from almost losing her soul.

Using the opening Hekapoo gave him, Marco entered into close quarters with Blackmore. The power of another soul collected in his hand, and Marco's fist shot forward like a bullet. Blackmore tried to move out of the way, but was too slow. Marco's hand heated up as it moved through the air at high speeds, and slammed into Blackmore's chest. Flesh and bone gave way as Marco buried his fist in the mage's chest. He found what he was looking, and grabbing hold, Marco tore his arm free. Blood spared forth from the wound, and Blackmore fell over backwards. His shadow collapsed along with him.

Blackmore stared at the man standing over him. He did not see the fourteen year old boy who defeated him, he saw Him. His lord, his God. Standing over him, clutching Blackmore's heart in His hand.

"You, truly are... Dracula." Blackmore said weakly, barely loud enough for Marco to hear. His eyes closed, and death took him. The massive shadow beast evaporated.

Marco felt a new soul enter his body, Blackmore's soul. He closed his hand into a fist, crushing the heart he had been holding. Hekapoo walked up to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder, though she quickly removed it upon realising he was covered in blood. Marco started at her touch, and turned to face her. His expression was hard to read, Marco had gotten very good at hiding his emotions over the past few years. He looked at her with concern on his face, but Hekapoo could see lingering hatred in his eyes.

"You okay?" He asked. She seemed fine, but having your soul screwed with couldn't be a pleasant experience.

"It'll take a lot more than that to kill me." Hekapoo said, "What about you?"

Marco was in bad shape. He was covered in bruises, several of his ribs were broken, as was his right leg, and he was pretty sure he had a concussion. Even with the aid of the regeneration spirit, he felt like he was about to collapse. But, he didn't want to worry her, so he planned to lie like he normally did about this sort of thing. Unfortunately for him, Hekapoo could usually tell when he was lying, and she could almost certainly see he was injured.

As Marco tried to think of something to say that she wouldn't immediately call bullshit on, a low hissing noise filled the room. It sounded like air slowly being let out of a balloon. They turned around to see one of the guests float down from the ceiling. Upon reaching the floor, his eyes turned back to normal as his soul returned to his body. More guests descended from the ceiling, returning to normal. Silenced reigned as everyone sat in stunned confusion, trying to determine if they were in fact alive right now. Eventually, someone spoke up.

Whatever they said went unheard, as, with the silence broken, literally everyone began talking at the same time. Shouting questions, and even threats at each other as they tried to figure out what had happened. Their attention soon turned to the pair standing at the front of the room, next to a corpse. Most of them recognised Hekapoo, and went quiet as they awaited some explanation. Hekapoo pinched the bridge of her nose and released an annoyed sigh.

Of course it would fall to her to clean this mess up. She just wanted to leave and get some rest. But a riot would probably break out if these people didn't get an answer soon, and considering that most of them were nobility, a war might even start.

"Okay, so you all kind of died for a little bit-" Hekapoo was cut off by the angry and panicked shouting from the guests. In retrospect, that probably wasn't the best way to start.

-000-

Eventually, they managed to calm everyone down, and give an abridged recount of what happened. Certain details were left out, such as Blackmore's name and background, but they explained that he attacked the ball, stole everyone's souls, and was killed by Hekapoo and Marco. Which lead to questions about who Marco was. Hekapoo only told them that he was a friend of hers and helped stop the attack.

As soon as things finally settled down, Hekapoo and Marco left through a portal. They were back in Hekapoo's house on Mewni. Hekapoo walked over to the couch and plopped down on it. Marco's old clothes were resting on the coffee table. He walked over to pick them up, but stopped just before touching them. He was still covered in blood.

"Hey, do you have a bathroom or something." Marco asked, "I need to clean up."

"First door on your right." Hekapoo answered.

"Thanks." Marco said. Wiping his hands off as best he could, he picked his clothes up off the table, trying to get as little blood on them as possible. He'd undoubtedly have to wash them when he got home, fortunately he'd gotten pretty good at getting blood stains out of his clothes.

"Hey." Hekapoo called out. Marco paused at the door and turned around to see what she wanted. Hekapoo looked off to the side, "Once you don't reek of blood, you wanna go somewhere to celebrate? I know some cool bars."

"Oh! Um, thanks for the offer, but I should probably head home. I've been gone for awhile." Marco said. He would have liked to hang out with Hekapoo some more, but he did need to go home. He didn't want to worry Star or his parents.

"Oh, thank god." Hekapoo said, slumping on her side, "I'm utterly exhausted."

"Then, why did you ask?" Marco said.

"Being polite." Hekapoo replied. She shifted on couch, getting comfortable.

"Did you hit your head during the fight?" Marco asked, only half joking.

"You did save my life. Just thought I should thank you." Hekapoo said with a shrug.

"You don't have to. I already owe you more than I could repay." Marco said. An awkward silence filled the room after that, neither of them thinking of anything else to say. Hekapoo rolled over to avoid meeting Marco's gaze.

"Imma take a nap." She said, changing the topic, "You have your scissors?"

"Right here." Marco answered, fishing them out of his pocket.

"Good, you can take yourself home then." Hekapoo said, still facing away from him. When she heard the door close behind him, she rolled back over.

Marco felt like he owed her, and she didn't like that. What did he even owe her for? Keeping his secret? This wasn't the first time she was part of a massive cover-up. It wasn't even the first time she kept a secret from the rest of the Commission. How many queens had they kept Dracula a secret from? Compared to reducing public knowledge of the Dark Lord to a mere story, not telling anyone about Marco was easy.

Was it because of how she acted around him? Hekapoo knew that Marco didn't take the news about his true nature well. It was understandable, being told you're basically the antichrist couldn't be easy for anyone. He was depressed for a long time after finding out. At first, his quest to get the scissors was the only the thing that kept him going. Hekapoo spent a lot of time around him then, comforting him and trying to get him back to normal.

Maybe he felt he owed her for that? Hekapoo hoped that wasn't the reason, he didn't deserve to feel indebted for that. The only reason she hung around him at first was because Arikado told her to. Hekapoo was ashamed to admit it, but after learning that he was Dracula's reincarnation, she was terrified of Marco at first. She was worried he would become Dracula, and the great battle against the night would continue forever. Now, the idea that Marco would ever become Dracula seemed ridiculous, and she felt guilty for thinking that he might. She felt guilty for a lot of things involving Marco.

Hekapoo stared at the ceiling and sighed. Dammit Marco, why do you have to be a good person? Things would've been so much simpler if you were someone like Graham.

-000-

The fabric of reality tore open and a portal formed in Star's bedroom. Marco stepped out it, and looked around. Star was lying spread eagle on her bed, and Pony Head was nowhere to be seen. Marco walked up to his friend.

"Hey Star." He said.

"Hello Marco." Star replied in a far off voice. She didn't turn to look at him, and instead stared straight up.

"Are... you okay?" Marco asked. He had never seen her with so little energy.

"Are any of us okay? Or are we all slowly dying, both inside and out. We distract ourselves from our troubles, and place such grand importance on petty little things. Even though we're just dust in the vast sea of infinity that is the universe." Star responded, in completely deadpan. Marco blinked at her.

"Is this about the Bounce Lounge? Is it actually closing?" He asked, genuinely concerned for his friend.

"I don't know. I didn't have any way of leaving this dimension. You took the scissors with you." Star answered.

"Oh, sorry." Marco said.

"I got over it. I had a lot of time to think while you were gone. I was all alone with my thoughts. I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to talk. Mostly because _someone_ won't come out from under the bed!" Star said, sitting up and putting some actual emotion into the last sentence.

"I'm not coming out! It could be a trick!" Pony Head shouted from beneath the bed.

"Pony Head, Hekapoo left _hours_ ago!" Star said, annoyed.

"I don't care! I'll stay under this bed all night if I have to. Remember girl, you didn't get those scissors from me!" Pony Head responded. Star flopped back down on the bed.

"I'm pretty sure I achieved enlightenment." Star said, going back to her emotionless tone.

"So, you're bored?" Marco asked.

"Deathly." Star replied. Marco let out a sigh.

"Stay right there, I'll make some nachos and find a movie for us to watch." He said. Star gave him a thumbs up, but otherwise didn't move.

Marco exited the room, and went down the stairs to the kitchen. He moved slowly. Partly because while his wounds had healed by now thanks to the regeneration soul, he was still very sore. But also because Marco was lost in his thoughts.

Blackmore knew about him, about what he really was. But how? He couldn't have figured it out just from Marco using the powers of the souls. Even Arikado didn't know for sure until the Castle recognised Marco's powers. All Blackmore should have been able to tell was that Marco had dark powers. Plenty of people possessed those. So how did he make the connection between Marco and Dracula?

Did someone tell him? No, that wasn't possible. The only people who knew Marco's secret were himself, Hekapoo, and Arikado. There had to have been something else. Blackmore was a member of Dracula's army, maybe he just more familiar with Dracula's power. If that was the case, then Marco had to be careful about using them, even more so than he already was. He didn't like using his powers, they served as a reminder of his true nature. Typically, Marco only used them in emergencies and when no one would see him use them. It was lucky that everyone was soulless during the fight. As a result, the only person who found out about his powers was Blackmore, and he was dead now.

' _Because I killed him._ ' Marco thought, as he came to the other thing that was troubling him. He looked at his hand, and closed it into a fist.

When did killing become so easy? He took a life without even thinking twice about it, and that scared Marco. As much as he could try to justify it, saying that he killed Blackmore in self defense or that he needed to keep his powers a secret, Marco knew that wasn't the reason. He killed Blackmore because he wanted to. Marco saw him hurting someone he cared about, and he wanted him to die. He felt so much hatred, more than he thought was possible. He felt like he was losing himself to the darkness.

"Marco? Are you okay?" A worried voice asked. Marco's head shot up, and he saw his mom staring at him.

"I'm fine. Why?" Marco lied, his face completely neutral and he even managed to sound legitimately confused.

"You looked upset is all." Angie replied.

"Just thinking about some stuff. It's nothing important." Marco waved off her concern. He made a mental note to only have existential crises in private.

"Oh. Okay then." Angie said, somewhat nervously. Though he certainly made it sound like it was nothing, she wasn't entirely convinced. He looked pretty unhappy before he noticed her. But she couldn't think of anything for him to be upset about, nor any reason for him to lie to her. Also, it seemed unlikely for her son to be able to hide his emotions that easily. Angie walked up to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, "Well, you can always talk to me and your father if you need to."

"Thanks mom." Marco said, giving his mother a hug. Internally, he gave a bitter laugh at the idea. He would keep this a secret till the day he died, especially from his parents. They didn't deserve to have Dracula as their son. Marco broke from the hug and walked into the kitchen.

Angie watched him as he left. There was something going on with him, even if she wasn't sure what. Angie just hoped that he'd tell her if it was important.

* * *

 **I'm planning on taking random bosses from** **Castlevania** **and using them as characters, both minor and major. I'm doing this because I'd quickly run out of Castlevania characters otherwise.**

 **Marco used the following souls: The Final Guard's soul for the shield, as mentioned. The Giant Worm's for the regeneration. The Lightning Doll's for the lightning. The Kicker Skeleton's to change direction midair. And Balore's soul for the punch. Speaking of souls, I'm not entirely sure what Blackmore's soul should do yet.**

 **Also, it's kind of odd that Hekapoo doesn't use her fire powers more in the show. But, since Blackmore is weak to fire, it just made sense to have her use them a lot here.**

 **You may have noticed that Blackmore had some abilities here that he didn't in** _ **Order of Ecclesia.**_ **I gave him some new attacks to make the fight more interesting, and justified by saying that he grew stronger from stealing souls.**

 **Originally, this chapter wasn't going to happen until later on, but I decided to do it sooner. Mostly because I wanted to have Hekapoo show up again.**


	4. Chapter 4: Meeting of Destiny

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or Castlevania.**

* * *

Marco looked up the stairway in front of him. At the top of the stairs was a large gate that marked the entrance to a shrine. The design made Marco think of Japan, making it stand compared to the mud huts of the nearby town. He started up the stairs.

It had been ten years since Marco first came to Hekapoo's dimension. Ten years of hunting down clones to earn a pair of dimensional scissors. There were other ways to get a pair, there's no way someone like Ludo could have blown out Hekapoo's flame after all, but Hekapoo only gave Marco the hard way. She had caught him with her stolen scissors, and even though Marco wasn't the one who stole them -That was Pony Head, as if he needed another reason to be annoyed with her-, that was probably the main reason behind the difficulty of Hekapoo's trial.

And difficult it was, the fact that he'd been at it for a decade now and still wasn't done was proof of that. Of course, he didn't spend all of his time chasing Hekapoo's clones. There were tons of adventures to be had in this remote dimension. Like fighting monsters, or exploring ancient ruins, or fighting monsters, or helping townsfolk in distress, or fighting monsters.

In fact, Marco had just helped out some townsfolk by fighting a monster in some nearby ruins. He learned about the small village from a traveling merchant, and how a terrible monster was terrorizing it. Upon learning that the beast was living in an old abandoned castle close to the town, he set off to defeat it. The monster turned out to be a hydra, much like the one he fought with Star on his first trip to Mewni. Of course, he had a far easier time fighting it now that he had learned how to stab things with a sword. Upon defeating the beast and saving the town, the townspeople told him about an upcoming solar eclipse. Marco had never witnessed an eclipse, so he was interested to see it. After asking around, he learned that the nearby shrine would be the best place to watch the eclipse.

The shrine was apparently dedicated to a sun goddess called Amaterasu, and had some special connection to solar eclipses. It was also apparently built by Hekapoo a long time ago, in commemoration of the sealing of some ancient evil. An interesting piece of information, but not something that would be especially helpful to Marco in his quest to earn his scissors.

Marco stopped, it was taking a surprisingly long time to walk up these stairs. He was barely halfway to the top. Strange, they didn't look that long when he started. Hopefully this wasn't one of those endless staircases, he hated those. Marco had only encountered one so far, but it was enough to leave him with a burning hatred of any structure that didn't follow the standard laws of geometry. In order to get up the endless staircase, you had to jump up it backwards in a very specific way until, eventually, you'd be catapulted to the top of the stairs. By the time Marco had finally gotten it right, both his head and legs hurt.

After making sure that he was actually making progress, Marco continued up the stairs to the shrine. Eventually, he did reach the top. It felt like it took five hours, but he reached the top. He looked back down the stairs. There weren't even that many, why did it take so long? Well, it couldn't have taken that long, seeing as the eclipse hadn't started yet. Marco would ponder the case of the mysterious time warping stairs later.

Marco passed through the gate at the entrance. He turned around to look at the gate more closely. It definitely reminded him of Japan. In fact, he was pretty sure this type of gate was called a torii. As he was looking at it, he noticed something perched on top of the torii, and squinted his eyes to try and make out what it was.

"Hekapoo!?" Marco said. He put a hand on the sword hanging at his side, but didn't draw it. Hekapoo looked down at him, but didn't move. Odd, usually she'd do something by now.

"Oh hey, you finally noticed me?" Hekapoo said, "You taking a day off or something?"

"I **was**. I can't spend every waking moment chasing you, ya know." Marco responded. Of course, now that she was here, he wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to blow out another one of her clones.

"Good. Cause, I'm also on vacation." Hekapoo said, "And I don't really feel like doing the whole cat and mouse thing today."

"You're on vacation?" Marco asked, as he removed his hand from his sword. Part of him was disappointed that he wouldn't make any progress on his quest to earn the scissors. However, this did mean he could just relax and watch the eclipse.

"Hey, I'm immortal, not a robot. I have things I do beyond just my job." Hekapoo replied with a roll of her eyes.

"So, you here to see the eclipse?" Marco asked.

"Yeah. I haven't been to see one in a long time." Hekapoo said. She hopped off the torii and walked past Marco.

"Well, they don't come around everyday." Marco said.

"Eh, it's not just that." Hekapoo said, as she stared into the distance, "I have a... personal history with solar eclipses."

"A personal history?" Marco repeated, perplexed. What the heck does that mean? The first thing he thought of was that she used to date a solar eclipse. It sounded like complete nonsense, but Marco once saw the sun crash a party, so it could be possible.

"I can't talk about it." Hekapoo said, turning to face him. Marco arched an eyebrow at her, "Seriously, I'm not telling you."

"Fine." Marco said with a shrug.

"Anyway, I figured it's been long enough since I last watched one, so here I am." Hekapoo said, "Plus, I wanted to see how the shrine was doing."

"You built it right?" Marco asked.

"Yeah, I was drunk at the time." Hekapoo said, "I went out to celebrate and woke up the next day to find that I had built a shrine."

"You built it while you were drunk? I'm amazed its still standing." Marco said, eyeing the gate as if it was going to fall over any minute.

"Admittedly, I did have to rebuild it." Hekapoo said. She looked to the sky and squinted, "Now shut up. It's starting soon."

Marco turned his gaze skyward, and cupped a hand above his eyes to try and see better. The moon inched across the sky, drawing closer to the sun with every second. As the eclipse approached, Marco felt like something was terribly wrong. He looked away from the sky and shook his head. He felt broken, as if he had always been missing half of himself, and only now noticed. The black moon covered the sun, and a chaotic darkness enveloped the land.

"No. It can't be." Hekapoo whispered. She stared up at the eclipse and her eyes widened in horror.

Marco tried to follow her gaze, but his senses grew dim. The darkness that clouded his vision was not from the shadow of the moon. He staggered forward and collapsed to ground. Marco weakly raised his head and saw a bat fly past him. He watched as it flew towards the eclipse. For a brief moment he thought he saw something in the pitch black sun, before unconsciousness overtook him.

It looked like a castle.

-000-

Star leaned forward on the living room couch, her eyes glued to the television in front of her. A half eaten bag of microwave popcorn sat next to her forgotten, she was far too invested in the show to bother eating right now.

On the TV screen, a giant robot was doing battle with a giant monster. The robot was made up of various different vehicles, a biplane for a head, trains for arms, Et cetera. The monster it was fighting look human for the most part, dressed in black clothing with a large "R" on its shirt, except it had a pastry for a head for some bizarre reason.

The show was utterly ridiculous, from the premise to the effects. It centered around weird animals with elemental powers that fought evil in a giant mech. Most of the special effects were done with really bad puppetry, but the giant mech fights were just two guys in suits duking it out. However, none of this stopped Star from gasping in shock as the heroes' robot got knocked down by the monster and didn't get up.

The monster cackled maniacally and narrator began to speak.

" _Are our heroes done for? Will the Demon Brioche take over the world? Find out next time, on Proteam Omega!_ " The television said, before the credits rolled.

"Ugh! Are you kidding me!?" Star yelled indignantly. She flopped down on the couch, jostling the popcorn bag and spilling food everywhere. Star picked up a kernel off the couch and tossed in her mouth, "I swear, every single episode ends on a cliffhanger."

Star picked up the remote and turned the TV off. There was nothing good on after Proteam Omega finished. Drumming her fingers on her stomach, Star tried to think of something to do. Marco was busy exercising, so he wouldn't want to do anything fun right now. It seemed like he never did anything fun with her lately. He spent all his time exercising, or studying, or trying to remember how the microwave worked. She knew that he needed time to adjust back to life on earth, but it was still frustrating. Especially since, when Hekapoo needs something, he'll just drop whatever he's doing and go help her.

Grumbling to herself, Star grabbed a fistful of couch popcorn and shoved it into her mouth. Savoring the taste of her incredibly unhealthy snack, Star went back to figuring out how to spend the rest of her afternoon. She could hang out with Janna, that was always fun. Though, Janna was currently 'laying low' after stealing the sign from the local Bloaty's Pizza Hog. As someone who had once been on the run from the law herself, Star knew that going out in public was generally a bad idea when the heat was on you. It would probably be best to leave Janna alone until the search had died down, she didn't want to get her friend in trouble after all.

Pony Head was grounded, again. Star wasn't sure what for, it happened so often she stopped paying attention. There was always Jackie, but that might be a little awkward. They'd never really hung out one on one. Also, she was Marco's girlfriend, so there was that. Not that Star had any problems with them dating, it just made things awkward for... reasons.

StarFan13 was sick, Kelly was on a date with Tad today, and Star hadn't talked with Ferguson and Alfonzo all year. In the end, she just decided to sit on the couch and eat the spilled popcorn until something interesting happened.

It turns out she didn't have to wait long, as a cinder block smashed through the front window. Star ran to the window to see who was throwing bricks at the house, and give them a proper telling off.

"Hey! Stop throwing rocks at my house, you darn kids!" Star said, shaking her fist angrily. She stopped though, upon seeing absolutely no one. Confused, Star opened the front door and looked up and down the street. Still, she didn't see the perpetrator.

Going back inside, Star closed the door and stared cautiously at the brick. Something strange was going on, unless bricks suddenly started flying by themselves. Which wasn't an impossibility to be fair. Crossing the living room, Star carefully picked up the cinder block to examine it. There was a string tied around it. Flipping it over, she found that the string was keeping an envelope attached to the brick. Star untied the string and looked at the envelope, it had the word 'FREE' on it. She opened it up and looked inside, then gasped excitedly at the contents and ran upstairs with the envelope.

Star kicked open the door to Marco's room. Inside, Marco was in the middle of doing push-ups. He looked up at his friend with slight annoyance. Would it kill her to open a door normally? Well, at least the door was still on its hinges this time.

"You need something, Star?" Marco asked, still doing his push-ups.

"Marco! Look!" Star yelled with the biggest grin on her face. She reached into the envelope and pulled out four tickets and held them in front of Marco's face. He stopped his push-ups to get a better look at them.

"Movie tickets?" Marco said, before resuming his push-ups.

" _Free_ movie tickets." Star corrected.

"Nice. What movie are they for?" Marco asked.

"Dunno, let me check." Star responded. She looked at the ticket and read aloud, " _Forever Fangs_."

"Never heard of it." Marco said. He hadn't really bothered to keep up with current media since he got back from Hekapoo's dimension.

"Me neither, but I'm not gonna pass up free movie tickets." Star said, "Okay, there's four tickets, so who else should we invite? Obviously, we need to invite Jackie. But what about the last ticket?"

"Why not invite Janna?" Marco asked.

"Normally I would, but she's laying low right now." Star said, narrowing her eyes and lowering her voice.

"What did she do?" Marco asked in a accusatory tone.

"I ain't no snitch." Star said.

"Why don't ask her if she wants to come anyway. I still owe her for that dream demon incident. Also, I can't think of anyone else to invite." Marco said.

"Okay, I'll call Janna, you call Jackie." Star said. She turned around and left the room to go make her call.

Marco stopped his push-ups and stood up. He walked over to his desk and picked up his phone. Turning it on, he scrolled through the contacts and paused at Jackie's number. Jackie Lynn Thomas, the girl he'd had a crush on since kindergarten, the girl he was currently dating, the girl he hadn't seen in 16 years, the girl who knew absolutely nothing about him. Marco sighed, the whole situation was screwed up beyond all reason. He'd barely talked to Jackie since he got back, every interaction with her made him feel guilty. How the heck were you suppose to have relationship with someone if you kept massive secrets from them?

He thought going back to his old life would be easy. Almost no time had passed on earth, nothing had changed. It should have been as simple as just doing what he did before and not telling anyone about his time in Hekapoo's dimension. But Marco underestimated how much _he'd_ changed. He'd forgotten so many things about his life on earth. He was able to relearn a lot of important things from reading through his diaries and other personal records like emails and whatnot. But there were other things that were just lost to him, mannerisms that he simply didn't have anymore, opinions that he should know by heart, and small details of what should have been recent memories. Marco couldn't even recall what his favorite food had been before Hekapoo's dimension, but he was pretty sure it wasn't maxim tomatoes.

He shoved these thoughts aside and hit dial. Even if it wasn't easy, he _would_ go back to his old life. After everything he'd been through, he had a chance to live a normal life, one untainted by the truth of what he was. So, he'd go back to being Marco Diaz, safe kid. And Marco Diaz, safe kid was dating Jackie Lynn Thomas.

" _Hello?_ " A voice over the phone said.

"Hey, Jackie." Marco said.

" _Hey, Marco. What's up?_ " Jackie asked.

"Star got her hands on some free movie tickets. You wanna come with us? I have no idea what the movie's about though." Marco explained.

" _Ooh, mystery film. Sure, what time?_ " Jackie asked.

"Um, not actually sure. Let me check." Marco said. He walked from his room to Star's. The door was open, and Star was sitting on her bed talking happily to someone, probably Janna, over her compact mirror. Marco knocked on the door to get her attention, "Hey Star, when does the movie start?"

"Oh, hang on." Star said. She dug her hand into her pocket and fished out the tickets. Reading them, she told him, "Eight o'clock."

"Eight." Marco relied the information to Jackie.

" _Cool, I'll see you then. Bye._ " Jackie said.

"Okay, bye." Marco said, and hung up just as Star finished her call, "Jackie's on board. What about Janna?"

"She's in. Now we just have to wait until Eight." Star said. A moment passed where she just stood still, "What time is it by the way?"

"5:28." Marco answered, looking at his watch.

Star frowned at the information. Great, she had nothing to do in the meantime.

"You wanna do something fun while we wait?" Star asked.

"I was in the middle of a work out-" Marco paused. Star seemed to visibly deflate at his words, "You what, never mind. I can skip the rest of my work out. What do want to do?"

"I have no clue." Star said, smiling happily.

-000-

Just before Eight o'clock, the four friends met outside the movie theatre. After Marco purchased snacks for everyone with the inordinate amount of money that he always carries on him, they gave their tickets to the attendant went to find some seats. Once the previews were finished, the movie began in earnest. Apparently, it was a horror movie, a fact known only to Janna prior to the first scare.

The plot focused on a band of three girls that were shooting a music video in an old Transylvanian castle. Unfortunately, a vampire that was sleeping in the castle woke up and started eating people. The rest of the film was fairly standard horror fair, jump scares, no cell signals, and terrible decision making. Neither the less, it still managed to freak out everyone. Well, everyone except Janna, who seemed to take delight in the grisly situations the characters were placed in.

The movie ended with everyone dead except for one of the band members, who managed to kill the vampire by exposing it to the light of the morning sun. It was quite late once the group left the theatre, the fact that Star made everyone stay to see if there was a post credits scene didn't help. They walked home under the starry sky.

It was a beautiful night, the air was cool and the sky clear, though the crescent moon didn't provide much light. Fortunately, the path the party was taking was well lit by street lights. Shops and restaurants lined both sides of the street, and a few cars were parked here and there. Bizarrely though, the area was empty save for the four of them. As they walked, they talked amongst themselves, mostly about the movie that they just watched.

"Why didn't they just hole up in the kitchen with a bunch of garlic until sunrise?" Jackie said, "Everyone knows that vampires don't come out during the day, everyone would have lived if they had just done that."

"By the time they knew they were dealing with a vampire, Luna was already missing. They probably wanted to make sure she was safe first." Marco reasoned. He had enjoyed the film, even if it was pretty campy. Though it wasn't terribly accurate to how vampires actually worked.

"The vampire wasn't going to hurt her though, he thought she was his long lost bride." Jackie argued, having not cared for the film herself. The idiotic actions of the main characters ruined the movie for her.

"Wait, is that why she didn't die? I wondering about that." Star said.

"Yeah, that part was poorly explained." Janna added.

"Maybe they were worried he'd turn her into a vampire?" Marco suggested, even though he knew he probably wasn't going to win this discussion.

"Marco, the plot was a mess, just admit it." Jackie said.

Their conversation was interrupted when a figure suddenly landed in the street roughly 20 feet in front of them. They were wearing a long black robe, with a hood that obscured their face, and carrying a halberd. Marco immediately went into a combat stance, cloaked figures showing up out of nowhere was never a good sign. Similarly, Star took out her wand, though she didn't go into a fighting stance. An evil aura seemed to radiate from the hooded person, one which felt familiar to Marco, though he couldn't quite place it. The person turned and looked to the roof of a nearby building, where another person in the same clothing stood.

"Hey! Look!" The cloaked person, a woman judging by her voice, yelled. She pointed at the group, "They took the bait! And you said no one would be stupid enough to fall for the old ' _movie tickets tied to a brick and thrown through a window_ ' ploy!"

The figure on the roof facepalmed, but otherwise didn't respond.

"Hey!" Star yelled. She aimed her wand at the woman in the street. Star wasn't entirely sure what was going on here, but seemed like they were under attack. Also, that woman definitely just insulted her.

"Wait, is that where you got the tickets from?" Marco asked, turning to look at Star.

"I mean, yeah, maybe." Star reluctantly confirmed.

"WHAT THE HELL?!" A voice from behind them roared. Everyone turned around to see another cloaked individual step out from behind a car. She pulled her hood back to reveal her face. The woman was pale, and had auburn hair, "We were suppose to attack all at once and take them by surprise! What part of ambush do you not understand!?"

"Ma'am, for the record, I tried to stop her." The figure on the roof said with a male voice.

"Okay! What's going on here!" Star demanded. Whoever these people were, they were obviously bad guys. The only thing stopping Star from blasting them right then and there, was the fact that she was utterly confused by what was going on.

"Right." The uncloaked woman, who seemed to be the leader, cleared her throat. Her face went calm and she spoke in a poised and formal tone, "We are under orders from our master to-"

"We want your wand!" The woman with the halberd interrupted.

"KAREN!" The leader angrily shouted at the halberd lady, any semblance of composure disappearing, "Would it kill you to keep your mouth shut, for FIVE! GODDAMN! SECONDS!?"

"Wait, you're after my wand?" Star asked. It had been ages since some had tried to steal it.

"Yes, we want your wand." The leader said, rubbing her temples in an attempt to calm down, "Give it to use or we'll kill you."

"You do know it's broken." Star said, looking down at the half crystal embedded in the wand. Even though she managed to get Toffee's finger out of it, it was still cleaved, "So, probably not worth stealing, right?"

"Y-you broke the Butterfly Wand?!" The leader said in a shocked tone, "HOW!? How did you break the wand?!"

"Well, it's kind of a long story." Star said. She thought back to the incident involving Toffee and the destruction and recreation of her wand.

"Star!" Marco hissed, "Stop conversing with the enemy."

"Does this mean we don't have to steal it?" The halberd lady, apparently named Karen, asked.

"Karen, I told you to shut up." The leader said, "And no. We're still to bring the wand back to our master. He'll probably find this whole thing fascinating."

"Who are you working for, anyway? Ludo?" Star asked. The small monster hadn't seemed very interested in her wand since he got one of his own, but she couldn't think of who else would try to take it.

"Who?" The leader asked.

"Ludo Avarius. Former prince of Castle Avarius." The hooded man on the roof said, "He made numerous attempts to steal the Butterfly Wand in the past."

"Oh. Thank you, Lucas." The leader replied.

"Of course, Ma'am." Lucas said with a small bow.

"Hey, hey!" Star said, snapping her fingers to draw their attention back to her, "Answer my question. Who are you working for, and why do want my wand?"

"How about this, I'll tell you who our master is, if you give us the wand." The leader said, holding out her hand expectantly.

"What? No! I'm not giving you my wand for that!" Star said, clutching the wand against her chest protectively.

"Then I'm afraid you'll never find out." The leader said with a small chuckle, before flashing a demonic smile at Star.

It was at this moment that Marco realised who these people were, or rather, _what_ they were. He finally placed the dark aura they had, and he could clearly see the leader's teeth when she smiled. She had fangs.

Marco and his friends were surrounded by vampires.

This was bad. Vampires are extremely dangerous, far outclassing the monsters that Marco and Star typically fought. They were strong, fast, and very hard to kill. He had only encountered a few while in Hekapoo's dimension, but they had proven powerful foes. He only won against them due to careful planning, clever tactics, and a literal swimming pool of holy water. Fortunately, there were only three vampires at current, but it was still an unfavorable situation. Especially since Marco was stuck in a far weaker body, had no holy weapons, and couldn't even use his soul powers since his friends were here.

Marco had only possible advantage, surprise. Everyone was fairly distracted at the moment, and he doubted the vampires expected him to make the first move. So, he charged the leader, and kicked her right in the face. The surprise attack worked, as she didn't even try to dodge or block the blow. The force of the kick sent the vampire flying backwards, and into a light pole. Marco dodged to the side, and Lucas struck the space where Marco had been with a pair of scimitars. Lucas was surprised that he managed to avoid his blow. He had moved from the rooftop as soon as Marco kicked his commander, expecting to catch the boy off guard. Marco hadn't actually known the attack was coming, but he was familiar enough with vampire speed to know that one could easily cross the distance to attack him in such a short amount of time, and dodged as a precaution.

Lucas spun around to face Marco and swung one of his scimitars at him. Marco tried to avoid the attack, but was a little too slow and the sword slashed across his chest, drawing blood. Thankfully, the wound was shallow, and wouldn't slow Marco down. Lucas moved forward to press the offensive. This human was a surprisingly competent fighter, having successfully dodged two of Lucas' own strikes and even landing a blow on their leader. His assault was brought to a premature end, as Lucas was forced to break off to dodge a magical blast. Star had been among the people caught off guard by Marco's sudden attack, but she had recovered as soon as Marco needed help.

"Narwhal Blast!" Star yelled.

A large narwhal shot out of Star's wand. It rocketed towards Lucas at high speeds, intent of slamming into the vampire. Lucas casually sidestepped the spell. As the narwhal flew past him, he held out his sword, slicing it in half. There had been no reason to do so, but vampires loved to cause harm to other creatures. Lucas turned to face Star, smiling at the look of horror on her face.

Marco moved forward to attack Lucas, but the leader charged forward and tackled Marco. She had recovered from being kicked, which while surprising, hadn't actually harmed her. The two of them flew forward, and Marco was slammed into another light post. The force of the impact caused the pole to bend backwards, and stunned Marco briefly. The vampire took advantages of Marco being stunned, and threw him across the street into the side of a building. She then moved to flank Star along with Lucas.

Star looked frantically back and forth, now surrounded by foes. Both vampires charged her at the same time. If Star tried to focus on one of them, she'd leave herself wide open to the other.

"Rabbit Rocket Blast!" Star shouted, firing her wand directly at the ground. She shot into the air, propelled by the spell.

Not missing a beat, Lucas leaped into the air after her. He shot towards Star, swords at ready. Star blasted a ray of magical energy at him. Lucas raised his swords to block the spell, but was still knocked backwards. He hit the ground, landing on his feet.

Star heard a yell from above her, and twisted around in the air to see that the leader had somehow gotten over top of her. She was rocketing down towards Star. Star tried to raise her wand to cast a spell, but wasn't quick enough. The vampire leader closed the distance between them in less than a second and slammed her fist into Star's chest. The punch sent Star hurdling towards the ground at incredible speeds. She didn't actually hit the ground though, as Lucas was lying in wait and ran forward and kicked her into a nearby car before she reached the ground. After utterly totaling the car, Star slumped onto the hard asphalt of the street.

Jackie and Janna watched in horror. The fight was clearly not going well, their friends were getting tossed around like rage dolls. And apart from Marco's surprise attack, they hadn't landed a single hit on the bad guys. When Star was smashed into the car, Janna suddenly darted forward to... do _something_. Unfortunately, she didn't get very far as a hand grabbed her shoulder. Janna turned her head to see the hooded figure with the halberd holding on to her. Janna struggled against her grip, but she wouldn't budge. Jackie rushed to help her friend, and punched the woman in the chest. But, she didn't even seem to notice, and Jackie withdrew her hand in pain. It was like punching a brick wall.

Karen turned to look at Jackie, and smashed the butt of her halberd into the teenager's chest. Jackie fell to the ground in pain. At the sight of her friend in danger Janna's struggling increased, but still failed to do anything. Laughing evilly, Karen aimed the blade of her halberd at Jackie, and drew it back in order to plunge it into the girl.

Star pushed herself to her knees. She wasn't out of the fight yet. In serious pain? Yes, but not out of the fight. The vampire leader floated slowly down from the sky, apparently she could fly. Upon landing she stalked towards Star, with Lucas following closely behind, and Star raised her wand.

"Winterstorm Hyperblow!" Star shouted.

A powerful gust of freezing air blew across the vampires. Ice formed over their bodies, freezing them in place. It didn't last for long, as the ice began to crack almost immediately. Both vampires shattered out of their icy shells, but were unable to react to Star's next spell.

"Supersonic Leech Bomb!" Several leeches fired from Star's wand and latched on to the vampires. The pair stopped, mostly out of confusion, and the leader casually ripped one off of herself and looked at it.

"Cute." She said, deadpanned. A blood sucker on a blood sucker. But spell failed to accomplish whatever it was suppose to do, or so the leader thought. The vampire went to crush the leech she was holding, but it beeped, causing her to pause. Then it exploded, along with the rest of the leeches.

The explosion made Karen look up, distracting her from murdering Jackie. While she was distracted, Marco came out of nowhere, and delivered a jump to kick to her head. Karen staggered backwards, releasing Janna and dropping her halberd. Marco grabbed the weapon before it hit the ground and swung it at her neck. Decapitation was a sure fire way to kill a vampire. Actually, decapitation was a sure fire way to kill most things, except Hydras. However, Karen caught the halberd just below the blade before it could take her head off. She tried to rip it away from Marco, but he held onto it, much to her surprise. Marco possessed the Headhunter's soul, so the more souls he had, the stronger he became, and Marco had a lot of souls. Unfortunately, even with the power boost granted by his spirits, he still wasn't strong enough to win a tug-of-war with a vampire in his current body. So when Karen yanked harder, Marco's grip failed and she took her weapon back.

Karen dashed backwards and took up a defensive stance. She evaluated the human across from her. He was strong, far stronger than a high school student should be, supernaturally strong. The boy was definitely human, that was obvious from his scent, but now that she looked closer, she could sense that there was a dark power inside him. Interesting.

Marco charged forwards, and tried to punch Karen. She parried the blow with her halberd, and tried to sweep his legs out from below him with her pole arm. Marco jumped over the sweep, but Karen kicked him in the chest. Marco flew back, and landed on his feet, before charging back at Karen.

"Rainbow Fist Punch!" Star yelled. A rainbow with a fist on the end fired out of her wand towards the leader. She raised her arms to block the blow, and slid backwards slightly from the impact. Lucas dashed forward, gliding across the ground. In less than a second he was upon Star. She just managed to conjure a magical shield in front of her to protect herself before he reached her. Lucas slashed at the shield with one of his scimitars, leaving a deep gash in it. He sliced at it again and again, raining down a flurry of blows, hacking away at the magical shield. Until finally, raising both scimitars above his head, Lucas brought them down, shattering the shield, and Star was sent flying backwards. She bounced along the ground, scrapping her skin against the rough asphalt of the road, before finally coming to a stop. As she struggled to her feet, Lucas darted forward, sword outstretched, ready to impale Star before she could react.

Star looked up to see a blade stopped mere inches from her face. Lucas was in front of her, with a large ice spike coming out of the ground impaled in his chest. Suddenly, several more ice spikes shot out of the ground, stabbing into Lucas' chest and face. Blood splattered on Star as she watched in shock.

Karen paused mid-swing of her halberd, and look at Lucas' corpse, then suddenly whipped her head to the side and looked down the street. Marco followed her gaze, and the leader looked in the same direction independently.

Walking towards them, was a woman in a long brown fur coat. She was an adult, probably around 30-ish. Her hair was blonde, and cut short. She stopped and began to spin in place, and snow appeared in the air, circling her. The snow collected together, forming several dozen daggers of ice. When she stopped spinning, the ice daggers shot forwards, towards the vampire leader. The leader tried to jump over the attack, but she wasn't quite fast enough and the daggers sliced through her legs, shredding them to pieces. She fell to the ground, collapsing in a heap as the bloody stumps that used to be her legs failed to hold her up.

Karen charged the new woman, raising her halberd and swinging it at her neck. The woman dodged out of the way of the blow, twirling as she did so. A sword of ice formed in her hand, and she brought it up to block the next swing from Karen. The two locked blades for a moment, but the woman shoved her sword forward, pushing Karen away. Karen staggered backwards, and the woman thrusted her sword forward. Karen tried to parry the blow, but proved too slow, and the ice blade stabbed into her heart. The woman withdrew the sword and Karen collapsed to the ground, dead.

The leader looked up from where she was laying, and glared at the woman. How did things go south so quickly? They had been winning! Who the hell was this woman, who just made mincemeat of her and her men? The woman walked towards her, and the leader hissed at her as she drew closer. The woman stopped in front of the legless vampire and drew her sword back. With one clean cut, the vampire's head was cleaved from its body. The woman looked around for any more enemies. Once it was clear that the danger was passed, the ice sword shattered, no longer needed.

Everyone stared at the woman in shock over what just happened. The woman's brutal extermination of her enemies disturbed them. Except Marco, he had seen worse. Additionally, killing a vampire was a mercy, it allowed their damned souls to rest. But he too was silent, as he tried to determine if the woman was friend or foe.

"Y-you killed them." Jackie said, breaking the silence.

"They were already dead." The woman replied, "These were nothing more than undead bodies, walking the earth in defiance of nature. They weren't people."

"Vampires." Marco said, clarifying her response. Jackie and Janna both turned and looked at him like he was crazy.

"Yes. Most people have a hard time excepting that bit though." The woman said, then elaborated further, "Upon becoming a vampire, a person loses their sense of self to evil. The person they used to be is dead."

"Um, thanks for the help." Star said, walking up to the woman. As traumatic as having someone unexpectedly impaled on numerous icicles in front of her was, this woman did save her life.

"It's no issue. I was merely doing my duty." The woman said. As Star approached the woman, her wand began to glow a rainbow of colours.

"What the hey?" Star said, looking at her wand in confusion, and it stopped glowing. The woman's eyes went wide.

"T-that wand!? Are you a Butterfly?" She asked.

"Huh, yeah. I'm Star Butterfly." She said. The woman immediately bowed to her.

"My apologies, your majesty. I didn't realise who you were." The woman said in a flustered tone.

"It's fine." Star waved away her concerns, "So, who are you?"

"My name is Sofía Lecarde, vampire hunter." She answered.

"Hang on, about that. Vampires are real?" Janna said, in a disbelieving tone.

"Yes. You just fought some." Sofía said. She reached down and picked up the severed vampire head and pointed at its open mouth, "See? Fangs."

Everyone reacted poorly to this. Star recoiled in disgust, Janna stared blankly at it in horror, Marco found it mildly distasteful, and Jackie clapped her hand over her mouth in an attempt to not throw up.

"Can you put that down?" Marco asked. He'd seen far _far_ worse, but it was clear that the display was upsetting his friends.

"Oh right, sorry." Sofía said, dropping the head, "I forgot that most people don't react well to things like that."

"Please don't do it again." Jackie said, closing her eyes to avoid looking at the bodies. She was worried that she'd vomit if she did.

"Okay, so. Vampires are real." Janna said, recovering from her shock. She turned to look at Star, "Why didn't you tell me? You know I'm into stuff like that."

"Hey, I didn't know about them until just now. I thought they were just a story." Star said.

"But, you're a Butterfly." Sofía said, starring at Star with a confused expression on her face.

"Yeah, so?" Star asked.

"Butterflys hunt the night. They've done so for centuries." Sofía explained.

"I'm not sure where you got that idea, but I've never heard anything about it before." Star said, then quietly muttering, "Then again, I didn't exactly listen to most of the stuff my mom told about my family history."

"It's true. My great, great grandfather, Eric Lecarde, fought alongside the Butterfly royal family in the war against the Vampire Lord." Sofía said.

"I don't mean to interrupt, but what are we going to do with the bodies?" Janna said, "Cause it kind of looks like you iced a bunch of dudes, no pun intended. And that will be a little hard to explain to the cops."

"Oh, don't worry about that. Vampires are self cleaning." Sofía said. As if on cue, the vampire corpses burst into blue flames, and soon burned away to nothing.

"Jackie, you can open your eyes now, the bodies are gone." Marco said. Jackie opened her eyes and was glad to not see anything that churned her stomach.

Sofía reached inside her coat and pulled out a couple small bottles filled with blue liquid.

"Okay, who got hurt?" She asked.

"Well, Star got kicked into a car." Marco said.

"Right, drink these. It's medicine." Sofía said, handing Star and Marco a bottle each. Marco looked at the bottle and recognised it as a potion, a life-giving concoction that healed injuries, though they tasted pretty nasty.

"Thanks, but I don't need it." Marco asked. Everyone stared at him like he had three heads. Their staring made Marco uncomfortable, and he couldn't think of why they were doing it, "What?"

"Marco, you have a giant bloody gash across your chest." Jackie said, concerned.

Oh right, that. It was a pretty long cut, but also very shallow, far from a serious injury and certainly not something that you'd waste a potion on. Healing potions were a precious resource, and Marco had learned to use them sparingly. But at the moment, Marco felt like he made a faux pas. Maybe old Marco, before he went to Hekapoo's dimension, would have reacted differently? Did he use to take injuries more seriously?

"Oh, crap. I forgot about that." Marco said, looking down in surprise. He was lying of course, he was completely aware of the damage he took. But at the moment, feigning ignorance seemed like a better idea than telling them that his rather nasty looking wound wasn't a big deal. That was liable to only raise more concern. Hekapoo never reacted well when she felt Marco wasn't treating his injuries seriously, and he'd probably get a similar reaction from his friends.

"You forgot having your chest slashed open with a sword?" Janna said, incredulously. Now, that was blatant exaggeration.

"It doesn't hurt though, at all." Marco said, poking the wound. Pain coursed through his body at the action, but Marco made sure to not show any, "So, I kind of forgot about it."

"Maybe the sword gives cursed wounds." Star said, "They don't hurt, and people assume their injuries aren't that bad, so they bleed out and stuff. That sounds like something an evil vampire would use."

"Could be. Vampires are quite crafty and sadistic." Sofía said. Relief washed over Marco, while cursed blade wasn't quite what he had been going for, it was an easy out. His relief turned to frustration when Sofía spoke again, "Here, you better take this uncurse potion too."

"T-thanks." Marco said, screaming internally as he excepted the new potion. Not only was he wasting a healing potion on an incredibly minor injury, but now he was also going use an uncurse potion when he wasn't actually cursed. It was just so wasteful. Maybe he could pocket the uncurse potion when they weren't looking and save it for latter.

"Welp, bottoms up." Star said, raising the potion to her lips and knocking it back. She quickly gagged at the concoction's foul taste, "blaugh, it tastes like... I don't even know."

"Chalk mixed with twenty pounds of salt, and the feeling of having lemon juice sprayed in your eye?" Marco suggested, his faced screwed up his disgust, having just downed his own potion. Almost immediately, he felt it working, as the cut on his chest closed and his bruises healed.

"Yeah, something like that." Star said. She struggled to drink to drink the rest of it, but eventually managed to down the whole thing.

"You get used to the taste." Sofía said, smiling smugly at their disgust.

"I doubt that." Marco replied. He certainly never did. It's why, even when he did have potions, he preferred to use his regeneration souls to heal.

"Let's get you kids home." Sofía said, she turned to Star, "Back to Mewni, princess? Or are you staying somewhere on earth?"

"Earth, I'm staying at Marco's house." Star said.

"I'll escort you there. Make sure no more Night Creatures try to kill you." Sofía said, "Why were they after you anyway?"

"Oh, they were after my wand." Star answered.

"They said that their master sent them to get it." Jackie added.

"Excellent!" Sofía exclaimed, grinning.

"What? Why?" Marco asked.

"I've been hunting the leader of this coven for months now. If they're interested in the wand, then I just have to wait around you and they'll eventually show up." Sofía explained excitedly.

"Wait, you want to use me as vampire bait?" Star asked. Her eyes quickly lit up, "That sounds awesome!"

"No Star, it sounds incredibly dangerous." Marco said, "We couldn't even beat a single vampire, and now you want to fight more?"

"It _will_ be dangerous." Sofía admitted. She paused to think. Putting kids in danger wasn't exactly an option, especially when one of the those kids was the princess of Mewni. Then she got a brilliant idea, "Which is why I'm going to train you to be a vampire hunter."

Star's jaw dropped open at the news. Marco had to push her mouth close, to make sure a mosquito or something didn't fly in it. Once it was shut, a large smile spread across her face, and she began to vibrate in excitement.

"Um, Star? You okay?" Marco asked, placing a hand on her shoulder. As soon as he did, she whirled around, grabbing both of his arms and getting incredibly close to his face.

"Marco!" Star yelled, before dropping to almost a whisper, "We're going to learn to hunt vampires."

"And other creatures of the night." Sofía added. Star let go of Marco and ran up to the woman.

"What are you gonna teach us?" Star asked excitedly.

"Mostly spells. Well, spell, singular. I know of a powerful spell that only a Butterfly can use." Sofía explained, and Star's smile grew even larger. She turned and looked at Marco, "Though I could teach some more basic magic to your friend too. I'll warn you though, I only really know how to use ice magic."

"Wait, you can teach us magic?" Janna asked, before Marco had a chance to respond.

"I can teach you _ice_ magic." Sofía corrected.

"C-can I learn some?" Janna asked, hopeful.

"I don't see why not." Sofía said.

Janna smiled at the news, while internally, she was screaming with joy. She was really going to learn magic, actually goddamn spell-casting, from a real mage. If she wasn't careful, she might start vibrating with excitement like Star.

"I can think of a couple reasons." Marco muttered, and Janna punched him in the arm.

"Okay, then. Your training starts tomorrow." Sofía said. She looked around at the large amount of property damage the vampires caused, "Now, we should probably leave before the cops show up."

* * *

 **This took me way frigging longer than it probably should have. I had a really hard time writing this chapter. Also, when I started, I expected it to be shorter than the previous two. Ha!**

 **Star felt a bit off in this chapter, and I'm not sure why. I just feel like I screwed up her character here, but can't figure out how.**

 **The shrine to Amaterasu is a reference to Japanese mythology. _Aria of Sorrow_ also referenced the myth in question, but they horribly mistranslated the name of the goddess involved. **

**The show that Star was watching is a reference** **to _Pokémon Special._ Specifically, it was a fictional show that Diamond watched.**

 **The final reference was the movie they went to see, both the title and basic plot come from an episode of** _ **What's New, Scooby-Doo?**_ **titled 'The Vampire Strikes Back'.**

 _ **Guest Review**_ **: Considering that the Butterfly family is standing in for the Belmont family in this fic, Dracula will not have any blood relation to them. This isn't _Lords of Shadow_ after all.**

 _ **reven228:**_ **A shadow familiar is probably the most logical idea for Blackmore's soul power.**


	5. Chapter 5: A Lesson in Magic

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or Castlevania.**

* * *

The first thing Marco was aware of was the sound of someone shouting. Hekapoo, he eventually realised. As he slowly came to he began to make out what she was saying.

"-then how the hell are we here!?" She yelled. Marco opened his eyes and saw two blurry figures, an orange one he knew to be Hekapoo, and a tall black one. As his vision cleared, he was able to clearly see who Hekapoo was shouting at. It was a man in a black suit. He was tall, dwarfing the admittedly short commission member. His face was incredibly beautiful, framed by cascading black hair that reached his shoulders. He looked almost too perfect, like someone you might see in a painting done by one of the old masters. But there was something about him that put Marco on edge. The man's gaze slide over to Marco, though he was still facing Hekapoo, who continued to yell at him, "Arikado, I swear to God, if you don't tell me what's going on right now-"

Arikado held up a hand to silence Hekapoo, who stopped talking so that he could give her some sort of explanation. Instead however, he turned to address Marco.

"So you've decided to join us. Did you have a pleasant nap?" He said.

"Don't you fricking ignore me!" Hekapoo yelled, the flame above her head flaring with anger.

"Ugh, what's going on?" Marco asked, rubbing his head. He felt like someone bashed him over the head with shovel. Additionally he was filled with a lingering dread and wasn't sure why. He stood up shakily, finding it hard to focus with his headache.

"I'll explain everything in a moment." Arikado said, turning to Hekapoo as spoke before focusing again on Marco, "But first, I have a few questions, and I need answers now."

"Okay?" Marco said, confused.

"Why have you come here?" Arikado asked.

It was at this moment that Marco actually took notice of his surroundings. They were in what looked to be a large castle courtyard. Large stone walls surrounded them on all sides, with a heavy metal gate just behind Marco, and a short flight of stairs leading up to the castle ahead. Statues of knights on horseback stood in the centre of the courtyard, with trees and other foliage growing along the wall.

"Where exactly are we?" Marco asked, effectively telling the man that he had no clue what he was doing here.

"This is Dracula's Castle." Arikado answered.

"Arikado! You can't tell him that!" Hekapoo hissed, glaring at him.

"The time for secrecy has passed." Arikado said.

"Wait, Dracula's castle? Are we back on earth?" Marco asked.

"No. We are inside the solar eclipse." Arikado replied.

"What? How!? Eclipses aren't places, you can't be inside one!" Marco said. He had seen a lot of weird things, but that was just nonsensical.

"We're in another dimension that's linked to eclipse, or something." Hekapoo said. Arikado opened his mouth to correct her, but Hekapoo cut him off, "It's not important. But how did we get here?"

"It would seem-" Arikado stopped and spun around, "Enemies!"

The door in front of them burst open, and several skeletons poured out. They were wearing armour and holding swords and shields. Skeletons with wings carrying spears flew down from above, and even more skeletons came into the courtyard, seemingly appearing out of thin air. Almost immediately, the three were surrounded by the undead.

A sword wielding skeleton lunged at Hekapoo and tried to stab her. She dodged and retaliated by punching the skeleton's head off. Marco pulled his sword from its sheath, and took up a defensive stance. A red energy collected around Arikado, and he raised his hand into the air, then brought it down in a decisive motion. Magic shot out from him, and the skeletons flashed before crumbling to dust, their life energy flowing into Arikado. One winged skeleton somehow survived the spell, and moved to attack Marco. However, it paused in front of him, as if it were mesmerized. Marco took advantage of its inaction, and cleaved it in two, right down the middle.

As the skeleton fell to pieces, something flew out of it. A red orb shot forth from the skeleton and moved about the room, before flying into Marco. As it entered him, he was subjected to a sudden flood of emotions, more powerful than anything he had ever felt before. Anger, hatred, and sorrow washed over him, it felt as though he was experiencing an entire lifetime's worth in the space of a second. Marco collapsed to the ground, overwhelmed by the emotions. But just as quickly as they had come, they vanished.

"Wha- what just happened?" Marco asked shakily, still recovering from the mental onslaught.

"So, it has awakened." Arikado said.

"What's awakened? What the hell is going on!?" Marco asked, panic clear in his voice.

"The spirit of the creature you killed has just entered your body." Arikado said, his expression hardening, "You have the power to absorb the abilities of the monsters you kill."

"Wait! Are you saying that Marco has dark powers?" Hekapoo asked, "That's impossible, I would have noticed before now."

"Y-yeah. I've killed lots monsters, and this has never happened." Marco said.

"Before, your powers were dormant, but the magic of Dracula's Castle has awakened them." Arikado said.

"Wh-why would I have dark powers?" Marco asked.

"That's not important at the moment. Right now, you must head to the Master's chamber." Arikado said.

"The Master's chamber? Why would he need to go there?" Hekapoo asked, "Dammit Arikado! You're not making any sense, just tell us what's going on!"

"If any of us want to leave this Castle, Marco must go to the Master's chamber. That's all I will tell you right now." He said firmly. Hekapoo glared at him but Arikado stared right back. Eventually, she looked away.

"Wait, can't Hekapoo just portal us out of here?" Marco asked.

"No, this dimension is sealed away. I can't open a portal here." Hekapoo said.

"The only way to leave is for you to head to the Master's chamber. Go there and you will understand everything." Arikado said, pointing to the door that lead into the castle.

"Wait, aren't coming with me?" Marco asked.

"I, too, have things I must do within these castle walls. Now, set forth Marco! The Master's chamber awaits. Hurry, the Castle does not taking kindly to intruders!" Arikado said. Hekapoo started to move but Arikado spoke again, "Hekapoo, stay here. I need to talk to you."

Hekapoo glared at him like she was trying to burn a hole through his head, which considering it was Hekapoo, might have actually been her goal. All the same, she stopped.

Marco walked to the door, and steeled himself. The feeling of lingering dread hadn't left him, in fact it had only grown stronger. He had so many questions right now. Why was he here? Why did he have magic powers? What exactly was this place? And why did he dread the answers to these questions? He reached the door and went to open it, but paused when he heard Hekapoo speak.

"Marco." She said. He turned around to see what she wanted, "Good luck. You're going to need it."

"Thanks." He said. Marco opened the door and strode through it.

The Master's chamber awaited him, and in it, his destiny.

-000-

Janna was having a hard time focusing in class, well harder than usual. The teacher was just as boring as ever, but Janna was especially distracted today. Once school was out, she was going over to Marco's house, where Sofía would teach her how to cast magic. It was hard to think about anything but the fact that she would soon be a mage.

Also she was extremely tired, that certainly wasn't helping her concentrate on school. It felt childish to admit, but her excitement made it hard to sleep last night. Fortunately, she was able to take a few naps during class, so she wouldn't be exhausted when it came time to learn magic.

Finally, the last bell rang and school was over. In Janna's opinion it lasted far too long. She quickly left the classroom to grab some stuff from her locker. She planned on heading over the Diaz house immediately after, she already texted her parents to let them know she'd be out for the day. However, Janna saw Jackie waiting near her locker. The normally cool and confident skater girl was staring at the ground, looking lost.

"Hey Jackie." Janna called out. Her friend's head snapped up to look at Janna. Jackie smiled and waved at her.

"Sup Janna." Jackie replied. She then asked slightly nervously, "Hey, you doing anything after school?"

"Yeah, I'm heading over to Marco's, remember? Gonna learn how to cast magic." Janna said, grinning at the thought.

"Oh yeah, right. Sorry, I'm a little out of it." Jackie said awkwardly, "I didn't get a ton of sleep last night."

"Same here. Why didn't you sleep?" Janna asked. She doubted it was for the same reason as her. Jackie hadn't displayed much interest in learning magic. Before they parted ways last night, Janna made sure to ask her if she wanted to learn it with her and Jackie declined the offer.

"I was just thinking." Jackie said. Her voice turned somber as she continued, "Mostly about last night."

"It was pretty crazy." Janna said slowly, not quite sure how to respond. Something was wrong. Jackie was acting odd, and it worried Janna, "Hey, are you okay?"

"What?" Jackie said, slightly startled, "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little shaken. I mean, we did almost die last night."

"Hardly the first time we nearly got killed. Remember the yarn monster?" Janna asked.

"Ugh, don't remind me." Jackie said jokingly.

"What about the Truth or Punishment box?" Janna continued teasingly.

"Okay, okay. We get in mortal danger a lot more than we probably should." Jackie said with a small laugh. Janna smiled at the laugh, glad to have raised her friend's spirits. She then took a deep breath, knowing that she was about to kill the light hearted mood.

"So what's the matter?" She asked seriously, placing a comforting hand on Jackie's shoulder. Jackie grew quite for a moment, before answering.

"Well, it's just. I've never seen someone die before." Jackie said quietly, almost a whisper.

"Y-yeah." Was all Janna could say. It was pretty traumatic, seeing someone killed in front of you, especially in such a brutal way. She tried to think of something to say, "Well, they were vampires. So, they weren't exactly alive"

"They still looked like people. And we didn't know that they weren't until after." Jackie said.

"Are you gonna be okay?" Janna asked.

"Yeah, probably. I'll just need therapy later is all." Jackie joked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Well, Marco's probably gonna be a psychologist in the future. So, I think you're set." Janna said. Jackie didn't respond and looked at the ground, "Jackie?"

"There's something I want to ask you." Jackie said after a moment.

"Okay, what?" Janna asked.

"Have you noticed anything... different about Marco?" Jackie said.

"Marco?" Janna said, confused, "Why is something wrong?"

"I don't know, maybe." Jackie said, "I feel like he's been avoiding me, and when we are together he's seemed different as of late. I can't even put my finger on it, but something feels off. You know him better than I do, you must have noticed."

"He has been acting odd for the past couple weeks." Janna confirmed, "He hasn't been writing in his diary, he's been eating different food than he usually does, and he spends most of his free time exercising now."

"Janna, have you been stalking my boyfriend?" Jackie asked.

"Stalking is such an illegal word." Janna said.

"Either way, you agree that Marco's acting strange?" Jackie said.

"I dunno, a little. It's nothing that weird." Janna said, "Maybe he realised keeping a diary is a dumb idea, maybe he just wants to try new foods, and wants to get in shape. There are perfectly reasonable explanations for this."

"I guess your right. Maybe it's nothing." Jackie said, though it was clear from her tone that she didn't believe it.

"Jackie, what prompted this? You never said anything about it before?" Janna asked.

"I didn't really notice before last night." Jackie said.

"Last night? What does that have to do with Marco?" Janna asked.

"I could stop thinking about it, and I realised something. I didn't notice at the time, but when the vampires attacked, Marco... he tried to kill one." Jackie said, "The one with the halberd, Marco tried to cut off her head. We didn't even know they weren't people and he still..."

She trailed off. The two of them stood in silence for a moment.

"Maybe he did know." Janna wondered aloud.

"What?" Jackie asked.

"I mean, when Sofía was talking and said they weren't people, Marco immediately knew she was talking about vampires. That's a pretty big leap in logic, unless he already knew." Janna said.

"But how would he know about vampires? Even Star didn't think they were real until yesterday." Jackie pointed out.

"Well, there was something weird I noticed last week, and I think it might be related. See, me and Star had to go inside Marco's memories in order to fight a dream demon that was bothering him." Janna said, "It's a long story, but while I was in Marco's head I saw some weird memories."

"Vampire related memories?" Jackie asked.

"Not exactly, but there were memories of Marco as an adult. Aka, Marco in the future." Janna said.

"Where exactly are going with this?" Jackie asked.

"What if Marco can see the future." Janna suggested. Jackie opened her mouth to speak, but Janna cut her off to explain in more detail, "Hear me out. Marco attacked the vampires first, like he knew how dangerous they were. And he even dodged that first attack from the sword guy, how did he do that? The vampire dude moved like sixty feet in less than a second, there's no way Diaz could have reacted that fast. Unless he knew it was coming."

"I dunno Jan, that's a pretty crazy idea." Jackie pointed out.

"We've seen weirder." Janna said.

"Yeah, but Marco having magic powers? That's kind of a out there conclusion to come to." Jackie said.

"But Marco knew that they were vampires before the rest of us. He couldn't have learned it from his adventures with Star, or she would have known about them too." Janna said.

"We really don't know that he knew. Yeah, he guessed that Sofía was talking about vampires, but we just watched a vampire movie. He probably had them on the brain or something." Jackie said, "There are far more normal explanations to this, ones that don't involve seeing the future."

"What about the memory of adult Marco? People don't usually have memories of things that haven't happened yet." Janna said.

"I don't know, are you sure it was even Marco? It could have been his dad or something." Jackie said.

"No, it wasn't Mr. D, looked nothing like him. It was definitely Marco. He even had the mole." Janna said, pointing to just below her right eye, "You said it yourself, Marco's been acting weird. Suddenly becoming clairvoyant would explain that."

"I guess." Jackie said, "Look, I just don't think there's enough proof to support this idea."

"Okay, how about I look into it some more first." Janna said, "You don't have to believe me right away. I remember you never did believe in the supernatural before Star showed up."

"Okay. I still don't think he can see the future, but you might be able to find out why he's been acting so weird at the very least." Jackie said.

"Great. I'll start invading your boyfriend's privacy right away." Janna said.

"Dammit, Janna." Jackie said with a frustrated sigh. She was starting to regret this decision.

"Star knows something about this, judging by how she was acting inside Marco's head. So I'll start with her." Janna said, a plan starting to form, "I'll look through her journal first, but if push comes to shove I can probably get some info from her directly. The girl's a terrible liar, I really need to get her to work on that."

"You always seem to have a plan. Well, I'm gonna get going now." Jackie said. She produced a helmet from hammer space, and put it on, before stepping on her skate board, "Sorry for keeping you, you probably want to go learn magic."

"You can come with, ya know." Janna said, making the offer for the second time, "It's be cool to learn magic with you. Or if you don't want to, you could just keep me company."

"Thanks, but I'm good." Jackie said, "I've had enough of vampires and magic for the time being."

"You gonna be okay?" Janna asked.

"Yeah, for now. See ye around." Jackie said. She put one foot on the ground and kicked off, skating away.

"Later!" Janna called out, waving to the retreating form of her friend.

Once Jackie was gone, Janna turned back to her locker. She got a few items from the locker, then started on her way to the Diaz house. She moved a lot faster than normal, Janna usually only ran when her life depended on it. But it she didn't want be late, and she already lost a lot of time talking to Jackie. Technically, Sofía wouldn't show up for another hour, but Janna wanted to get there early. She had some digging to do.

-000-

Janna rang the doorbell of the Diaz house. She was sorely tempted to ring it again immediately, but managed to restrain herself. She was feeling rather impatient, and she wanted to find out as much as she could about Marco's secret before Sofía arrived. Because Janna knew that once Sofía showed up she was going to be too distracted by magic to get any more investigating done. So she had a limited window of opportunity to get info from Star.

Just as Janna was about to ring the doorbell again, the front door swung open. Marco's father look down at her from inside the house.

"Oh, hello Janna. Come in." Rafael ushered the girl inside. He closed the door behind them, "Marco said you were coming over. Though, you're a little early."

"Sorry about that. I lost track of time." Janna said.

"Uh, isn't that excuse usually for when your late?" Rafael asked.

"Hey, is Star home?" Janna asked, ignoring his question. She certainly wasn't going to explain why she was actually early.

"Oh, she's in her room. But, I'd be careful if you go in there. It's not exactly safe at the moment." Rafael said cryptically, before walking off.

Janna considered asking him what the hell that meant, but decided it would be more fun to see for herself and started up the stairs. As Janna approached Star's room she heard crashing noises. It sounded like someone was tossing things around the room. She paused at the door, curiosity warring with common sense. She really wanted to know what on earth was going on in there, but the sound of a lamp breaking from behind the door acted as a surprisingly efficient deterrent. It was unlikely to be anything too dangerous, or Mr. D probably wouldn't have been so calm. Then again, it seemed like the Diaz's were always calm, even when they probably shouldn't be. Well, at the very least, Star herself probably wasn't in danger.

In the end, curiosity won out. The sound of a heavy object being pushed across the floor had been the deciding factor. Why the heck was Star moving her furniture around the room? Janna had to find out. So she opened the door, went inside, and almost stepped on a bear trap.

"Gah! Dammit Star!" Janna yelled, jumping back to avoid losing her foot to the bear trap, "I thought we agreed that you wouldn't leave those lying around!"

Star didn't answer. Janna looked around the room and saw that it was an utter mess, even more so than it usually was. It looked as though a tornado had blown through. Various random objects lay strewn about the room, furniture was in odd places, the bed was turned on its side, and the fish tank had been completely emptied out with its occupants sitting next to it in water filled plastic bags. Janna didn't see Star anywhere in the room and was about to call out to her, when she noticed that the closet was open, and items were being chucked out of it.

Janna slowly made her way to the closet, navigating the obstacle course that the room had become. She almost tripped at multiple points, and just barely avoided stepping on that thing that looked like Star's legs sticking out from under a rug. Janna didn't know what was under that rug, and she decided she probably didn't want to. As she made her way through the clutter, she noticed something lying on the ground, Star's journal. Just was she was looking for, and here Janna thought it was going to be hard to get a look at it. Star normally kept it safely locked inside her closet, which could only be opened with magic. Effectively ensuring that only Star could open it. Whatever Star was doing right now proved to be very useful to Janna. Picking it up, Janna stored the journal in her jacket. She'd give it back later, and with how disorganized the bedroom was, Star was unlikely to notice it missing anytime soon.

Janna continued towards the closet. Once she got closer she could hear Star mumbling to herself inside. More objects were thrown from it, turning the bedroom into a bigger mess than it already was. Poking her head inside, Janna saw Star sifting through a pile of junk, tossing items aside.

"Hey! Star." Janna said, stepping into the closet. The princess didn't respond, or even seem to notice Janna, " **STAR!** "

"Huh? Oh, hey Janna." Star stopped what she was doing and turned around for a moment to look at Janna. Before immediately going back to rooting around the closet.

"What are you doing?" Janna asked.

"Just looking for something." Star replied. Well, that explained the mess.

"Oh, well whatcha looking for?" Janna asked.

"A book. I know I brought it with me." Star answered, then paused, "I think."

"Oh, a book." Janna said. Hopefully it wasn't her journal. It was unlikely, since that had already been thrown out of the closet. But Star hardily seemed to be an organized searcher, so she might have accidentally passed it over, "What does it look like?"

"Ah ha! It looks like _this_!" Star turned around and held up the book she had been looking for. The front cover depicted a brown haired woman staring at a castle, her back facing the reader. The castle was large and ominous looking, with a red full moon behind it.

" _Castlevania._ " Janna read the title aloud. It looked like a story book to her.

"It's a story book." Star said, confirming Janna's thoughts, "I was thinking about what Sofía last night, about the Butterflies hunting the night. And I remembered this book."

"Why? What's it about?" Janna asked. Star opened up the book at and flipped through the pages.

"It's the story of how Treva Butterfly and her companions defeated the evil vampire Dracula." Star said, "I always thought it was just a story. I wonder if it actually happened."

"We could ask Sofía when she gets here." Janna suggested. Star mulled over the idea for a moment, but then her head shot up.

"Or, we could ask someone else right now." Star said, and walked to the exit of the closet.

Upon reaching her room, she stopped dead in her tracks. Piles of clutter stood in front of her, blocking her path. Star gave a huff of annoyance, and raised her wand.

"Super Path Clearing Blast!" She yelled, and several of the miscellaneous objects laying around the room moved to the side, creating a clear path to the magic mirror hanging on the wall.

' _Man, it must be nice to have magic._ ' Janna thought, not for the first time. Soon though, she'd have magic herself.

Smiling at the thought, Janna followed Star down the path. Once they reached the magic mirror, Star pulled back the curtains covering it.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, call mom." Star said. The mirror repeated the caller ID, and after a few seconds, Queen Moon appeared on the surface of the mirror.

"Hello Star, do you need someth- Good Lord! What happened to your room!?" Moon shouted, her eyes bugging out of her head. Not an unreasonable reaction. The place looked like it had been vandalised by the mob.

"Nothing!" Star said, moving to try and block her mother's view of the mess, "It, uh normally looks like this."

"What!?" Moon said, her tone turning from shock to anger.

"No! I mean, it **doesn't** normally look like this." Star stammered out, "Normally, it's way cleaner, immaculate really."

"Then why does it look like an earthquake hit?" Moon asked, "You haven't been practicing your spells inside have you?"

"I'm not suppose to? I mean _no_! Of course not." Star said, "You see, this mess is because, of... An earth holiday! Messy Room Day, where you make a mess of your room. Gotta respect the local culture, right?"

"I suppose." Moon said, though from her tone she didn't believe Star, "Is there a reason you called me?"

"Oh, right. Do you remember this?" Star said, holding up the story book for Moon to see.

"Castlevania? Of course, I used to read it to you when you were little." Moon said, then paused for a moment, "Well, I had the servants read it to you, but I do remember it. Why?"

' _Wow, mother of the freaking year._ ' Janna thought.

"Is there maybe a chance that it might be true? Like did the Butterflies use to fight vampires?" Star asked.

"What? No, of course not. It's just a story. Really Star, I thought you knew that." Moon said.

"Of course, _I_ knew that, but my friend Janna here was asking about it." Star grabbed Janna and dragged her in front of the mirror, "And you really are the expert on this sort of thing, so we decided to call you."

' _Dang it Star, leave me out of this!_ ' Janna thought as she waved awkwardly at the queen.

"Well, let me tell you that it is just a story. Everything in that book, save Treva's name, is entirely fictional." Moon said.

"Even the vampires?" Janna asked.

"Yes, there's no such thing as vampires." Moon said. She then turned to address Star, "Is that all you wanted to ask?"

"Uh, yeah. That's everything." Star answered.

"Very well, goodbye Star." Moon said, and hung up.

"Well, mom said that it's just a story." Star said, looking at he book in her hands.

"Yeah, but she also didn't know vampires existed." Janna pointed out.

"Which is weird, by the way. She always acts like she knows everything." Star said, "If mom's wrong about vampires then is she also wrong about this book? Sofía said the Butterflies used to fight vampires, and this is a story about a Butterfly fighting vampires."

"Maybe your family used to fight vampires a long time ago, but stopped at some point." Janna suggested, "And eventually everyone assumed the stories about them fighting vamps were fictional."

"Maybe." Star said. She let out a groan and slumped against the wall, "I wish Glossaryck was here, he'd know."

"Yeah, but he might not tell you even if he did." Janna said.

"I probably would have been able to bribe him." Star said.

"Guess we'll just have to wait until Sofía gets here, and ask her." Janna said.

"I guess." Star said, as she opened the book and started reading the first paragraph, "Hey, did you get here you early?"

"No." Janna replied.

"Oh, okay." Star went back to reading her book.

Janna decided to leave Star to her book. After all, she had some reading of her own to do. Placing a hand on her jacket to feel the journal hidden inside, Janna turned to leave. Only to stop dead in her tracks as the path between her and the door was blocked by junk.

"Are you gonna clean up your room?" Janna asked. Normally she didn't care how messy people were, but the clutter would make it hard for her to leave the room. Also, it was dangerous, she might step on a bear trap.

"Yeah, sure." Star said, not looking up from her book. She waved her wand and a pink cloud with a face poofed into existence, "Cloudy, could clean up the mess."

"Sure thing Staaaa- oh man." Cloudy said as it looked at the utter chaos the room was currently in. The chaos it had to pick up.

"Come on, Cloudy. Don't have all day." Star said.

"Can you carry me to the door before you get started?" Janna asked the cloud. It would take way too long to wait for the spell to clean up the room.

"Sure." Cloudy responded.

The cloud lowered itself to the ground so that Janna could climb on. Upon doing so, Cloudy flew Janna over the mess to the door. Janna dismounted and existed the bedroom, while the cloud charm went to clean up the mess. Now, Janna needed to find a nice hidden place to read Star's journal.

While Janna was walking down the hall, she passed Marco's room and saw that the door was ajar. She wondered what he was up to. Probably just working out. Still, it wouldn't hurt to check. She got close to the door and peeked through the opening. Inside, Marco was in a fighting stance. Suddenly, he threw a series of rapid punches, moving forward with each attack, then he suddenly dashed backwards to where he was originally standing. Janna blinked in surprise. That looked a lot more impressive than Marco's usual karate practice. In fact, it didn't look anything like his usual karate practice, she wasn't even sure it was karate. He didn't do a single karate chop, and he wasn't wearing his karate robes either.

Now, Janna didn't know a lot about martial arts, but she knew that was not how Marco usually fought. Why was he suddenly using a different fighting style? And when did he start? Janna had never seen him fight like that before, so it must have been a recent change. But he moved with such skill and speed, even more than he did when he did karate. There's no way he could have gotten that good so quickly.

Janna needed to find out what was going on with Marco, and reading Star's journal might yield answers. Stepping away from the door, Janna turned to the window at the end of the hall. She opened it and climbed through, taking care not to fall upon the cactuses in the yard below. Janna climbed up to the roof, she was unlikely to be bothered up here. Once she was safely on the tiled roof, Janna took the journal out of her jacket. She opened the book and began flipping through it. The book mostly told her stuff she already knew. Like how Star very clearly had a crush on Marco, though the poor girl didn't seem realise it yet or was simply in denial. Eventually though, she came upon some useful info.

An entry from the same day that Marco stopped writing in his diary. It mentioned how Star had to rescue Marco from another dimension, a place belonging to a woman named Hekapoo. Even more interesting, Marco apparently didn't want to come back at first, and had to be convinced by Star to return home. Also, he asked her not to tell anyone about the whole ordeal. Everything about it struck Janna as odd, why wouldn't Marco want to come home, why did he ask Star to keep the whole thing a secret, and what kind of name was Hekapoo?

Janna turned to page to see if she could find some answers, but was instead greeted by a whole two pages of Star ranting about "Marco's delicious abs". Janna tilted her head in confusion. Marco did **not** have abs. Then again, Oskar's music wasn't good either, so maybe Star just had a warped perspective of reality when it came to her crushes. After checking the next couple pages, Janna failed to find anything else useful.

But she convinced now more than ever that there was something going on with Marco. And it seemed that his trip to Hekapoo's dimension was the key to the whole thing.

The sound of a portal opening snapped Janna out of her thoughts. She looked up from the journal and peeked over the roof to see a swirling vortex in front of the Diaz's driveway. Out of the portal stepped Sofía. It looked like Janna's time to investigate was up, fortunately she found out some useful information. Janna carefully climbed back down to the window, and slipped back inside the house. She walked up to Star's door and knocked on it.

"Hey, Star! Sofía's here." Janna said, loud enough for Star to hear her inside.

A series of loud crashes came from inside the bedroom, that got louder as they drew closer to the door. It seemed Star was taking a direct route through the mess. The door burst open as Star stumbled through it.

"She's here? Where!?" Star asked excitedly. It looked like she was looking forward to learning magic from Sofía just as much as Janna.

"Um, Star. You got something in your hair." Janna said, pointing to a bear trap that was closed around Star's blonde locks.

At that moment, the doorbell rang, and Star bolted down the hall towards the living room, with the bear trap still in her hair. Janna looked inside Star's room, and saw that Cloudy was still inside trying to clean up the room. Once the spell's back was turned, Janna took the journal out of her jacket and tossed it into the room. She then followed Star down the hall. She reached the stairs and saw Rafael walking to the door to answer it, only for Star to dash to it first, nearly barreling over him in the process. Star quickly yanked the door open.

"Sofía, come in, come in." Star grabbed the vampire hunter by the arm and pulled her inside.

"Oh, who's this?" Rafael asked, "I don't believe I've seen her before."

"Sofía Lecarde." The woman said, extending a hand to Rafael. He took her hand and shook it.

"Rafael Diaz. Are you one of Star's servants from Mewni?" Rafael asked.

"Not exactly." Sofía said.

"She's here to teach me and Janna some cool magic spells." Star said.

"She's going to teach Janna magic?" Rafael said, "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Don't worry Mr. Diaz, it's perfectly safe. Janna will be fine." Sofía said.

"That wasn't quite what I meant." Rafael said.

"So what kind of spell are you going to teach me?" Star interrupted, "Will I get to shoot sun lasers?"

She pulled out her wand and made little 'pew pew' noises, pretending to shoot lasers from it. Shortly after Star took out her wand, it starting glowing. Star stopped making laser noises, and looked at the wand, which stopped shining soon after.

"Huh, it did that last night too. I wonder what's up with it." Star said, shaking the wand.

"The wand is merely reacting to my presence." Sofía said.

"Huh, why?" Star asked.

"The Lecarde family has a strong connection to the wand. We guard its power." Sofía said. She saw the question that Star was about to ask and continued explaining, "You see, the wand's power is sealed. The Butterfly family wand is a weapon of tremendous power, capable of felling even gods. As such, it must not be used lightly. So its true strength was sealed away. It is the sacred duty of Lecarde family to unseal the wand's power when it is needed."

"Whoa, I didn't realise that the wand so awesome. I thought it was just like, training wheels until I learned how to dip down into the hobo gravy of the universe." Star said. "Hey, could you unleash its full epic power?"

"I can, but I won't." Sofía said.

"Why not?" Star asked, disappointed.

"The wand's true power is only to be used when it is absolutely needed. Because if you use the true wand too much, _it will kill you_." Sofía said, her voice serious. She then crouched down to get a closer look at the wand, "Besides, it looks like the wand was cleaved. I couldn't unseal its power like this, even if I wanted to."

"T-that's okay. It's fine the way it is." Star said, looking at the wand nervously.

"But enough about the wand. I came here to teach you magic." Sofía said, "We should probably head out back, practicing magic indoors is ill advised."

"Right, of course. This way." Star said, leading Sofía to the backyard. Janna followed not far behind.

Once they got outside, Sofía reached into her coat and pulled out a leather whip. She then tossed the whip to Star, who caught it.

"Before I teach you the spell, you need to know how to use a whip." Sofía said.

"Um, why?" Star asked.

"The spell I'm going to teach is called ' _The Morning Star Whip_ '. It summons a chain from the head of your wand, with a mace attached to the end of the chain. It is a dangerous spell, so you need to know how to use a whip before you cast. Otherwise you might hurt yourself or others." Sofía said.

"A mace on a chain? Isn't that a flail?" Star asked.

"No, it's a whip." Sofía responded curtly.

"I'm pretty sure it's a-"

"WHIP!" Sofía shouted.

"Okay, fine. It's a whip. Jeez." Star said.

"Anyway." Sofía gave an awkward cough, "Once you are proficient with that leather whip, I'll teach you how to cast the Morning Star."

"Easy peasy, I was trained by the royal knights to use all kinds of weapons." Star said. She pulled the whip back like a fishing rod she was about to cast, "Check it out."

Star threw her arm forward, and the whip cracked as it speed through the air. Unfortunately, as the whip whipped forward, it hit Star in the back of her head. Yelping in pain, she dropped the whip. Sofía dashed up to Star to check on her.

"Are you okay!? You didn't lose an ear or something did you?!" Sofía asked, worried.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Star said, rubbing the back of her head.

"Oh, thank God." Sofía breathed a sigh of relied, "It would be pretty bad if the first Butterfly to seriously injure herself with a whip did so under my watch."

"Have a lot of Butterflies used whips?" Star asked.

"Of course, like I said the Butterflies' most powerful spell is the Morning Star Whip." Sofía said.

"You know, I've never heard of that spell before. I don't think it was in the Spell Book either." Star said.

"You won't find it in there. The Morning Star was originally passed down manually, rather than be transcribed. Though, once the Lecardes became the guardians of the wand, it became our duty to teach the spell when it was needed." Sofía said.

"Why haven't I heard any of this before? I've never heard of the Lecardes, or the wand's true power, or the Morning Star Whip. Even my mom doesn't know, and she's the queen." Star asked

"I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that question." Sofía said, "My own knowledge of the Butterfly family is limited to the wand, and their legacy of hunting the night. I've never even been to Mewni."

"Are you sure that you're right about the Butterflies. I mean, I have an old storybook about a Queen who fought vampires, what if that's where this idea that we hunted the night came from?" Star asked.

"Princess, most of the multiverse don't know that vampires exist, even you didn't know about them until now. But they are real, even if I don't know why they faded into legend. Similarly, the Butterflies _did_ hunt the night, I'm positive they did." Sofía said. "I don't know why neither you nor the queen don't know this, but it doesn't really matter to me. That wand was meant to destroy the forces of the night, and it is my duty as a Lecarde to teach you how to use it."

"I guess you're right. I mean, I never really cared about my family's long boring history before." Star said, and she picked the leather whip off the ground, "So how do I use this thing?"

-000-

Janna watched Star and Sofía's training. It certainly wasn't how Janna imagined you would learn magic. She always thought it would involve old grimoires and rare and bizarre spell components, not swinging a whip around. Then again, this was probably a special case. Star was trying to learn some unique super spell. Janna doubted the learning process would be the same for her. After all, she was going to be learning magic from scratch, while Star was already a highly gifted mage.

Eventually, Star's whip lessons came to end. The lesson didn't last as long as it was probably suppose to, but Sofía had to cut the whip after Star got it tangled around her own neck and she nearly choked herself. After that fiasco, Sofía wisely decided that Star's lessons were done for the day. Also, she didn't have another whip on her.

Once they made sure that Star was fine, it was finally time for Janna to learn how to cast magic. Excitement welled in Janna, it was actually going to happen. Part of her had been worried that it had been a dream, that she completely made up the part of last night were Sofía agreed to teach her magic. But it was real, she was going to be a mage.

Ever since she was young, Janna had been obsessed with the supernatural. She constantly blew her allowance on weird occult books, followed paranormal blogs religiously, and she even watched those terrible ghost hunting shows. Between her obsession and her general personality it was a wonder she had any friends. The day Star showed up would be forever ingrained in Janna's memories. It marked the day that actual goddamn magic showed up in her life. And now she was going to learn how to cast it. Janna could only imagine what to expect.

"Alright, start twirling." Sofía said.

Well, Janna hadn't expected that.

"Why?" Janna asked.

"Why can't they just follow my instructions, that's what I did with my teacher." Sofía muttered under her breath.

"What?" Janna asked, not hearing what Sofía just said.

"Ice magic involves a lot of twirling. I want to know what I'm working with." Sofía explained, ignoring Janna's last question.

"Um, okay." Janna said. She began slowly spinning in place.

"That's not twirling, that looks like someone trying to look at the back of their neck." Sofía said, "You've got to put more energy into it."

Janna started spinning faster. This most certainly hadn't been what she was expecting, it felt more like some weird exercise routine than magic lessons. For a moment, Janna was worried that this was some cruel prank, and Sofía had no actual intention of teaching her to cast. But, she did remember the vampire hunter spinning last night when she created the ice daggers. So, Janna spun even faster.

And then tripped over her own feat and fell face first on the lawn. Sofía just stared at her student.

"These kids are going to be the death of me." Sofía said.

' _It's probably going to be the other way around._ ' Janna thought, still lying face down on the grass.

* * *

 **This was originally going to be the first _half_ of a chapter. But it wound up being the length of a full chapter itself, so I decided to cut it in half. **

**I don't recall vampires ever appearing in Svtfoe, I'm assuming they didn't because knowledge of vampires being uncommon is a major plot point in this fic. If I'm wrong and vampires have shown up in Svtfoe, then oops.**

 **Gods, these characters are so hard to write, Janna especially feels Out of Character in this chapter and I can't figure out how to fix it. I'm trying my best, I swear.**

 **Also, Kingdom Hearts III is out, so I'm probably going to be distracted for a while.**


	6. Chapter 6: The Gears Go Awry

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or Castlevania.**

 **I would like to apologise for the delay. I didn't even start this chapter until after I finished Kingdom Hearts III, which I greatly enjoyed by the way.**

* * *

"Tha-that's not... NOOO!" Graham cried out, his voice distorted and inhuman. A pained shriek filled the throne room.

With a burst of light, his monstrous form caught fire. Marco watched as Graham was consumed by the magical flames. He burned away to cinders, until there was no trace left of the abomination that he had become.

With Graham dead, Marco fell to his knees, his energy spent from the battle. Wounds covered his body, and every muscle ached from overuse. Even his magic was spent, so he could not summon the Guardian Alura Une to heal him. Slowly, Marco held up his sword, the Valmanway, and stared at it. The blade was clean, untainted by even a single drop of blood, in spite of the fact that he had been slashing away at Graham with it just moments prior.

The reality of the situation began to sink in, now that the rush of the fight was over and he could think about things other than staying alive. Marco killed Graham. He had never taken someone's life before. Feeling slightly ill, his grip on the Valmanway loosened and the sword fell from his hand, clattering against the bloodstained floor.

Marco was snapped back to the present as a massive surge of darkness began flowing through the room, filling the air with a loud warbling noise. The Castle had judged Graham to be unworthy, and as such the magical powers he absorbed abandoned him at the moment of his death. As the dark magic moved aimlessly around the throne room, Marco could feel its power. It didn't feel repulsive like thought it would. It felt strangly soothing, and even more bizarrely, almost... nostalgic.

However, his thoughts were interrupted when the doors the Master's chamber flew open. Arikado entered the room, cloaked in a powerful magic aura meant to shield him from the chaotic energy that filled the room. He stood in the doorway and stared at Marco, regarding him intensely.

"The castle is weak now!" Arikado said loudly, so as to be heard over the darkness, "The portal to your world should be opening!"

"Great! Where is it?" Marco asked. He rose shakily to his feet, picking up the Valmanway as he did.

"It hasn't opened yet! You must order the castle to open the portal! It has felt your power and may obey!" Arikado said.

"Got it! Castle! I command you to release us! Return every living creature to where we came from!" Marco shouted, his voice strong and demanding. It felt so natural, like he had done it a hundred times before. However, nothing happened. Fear washed over Marco. Did he screw up? Did he botch their one chance at escaping this hell!? He spoke in panicked voice "It's not working!"

"You're wrong. The fabric of space is beginning to tear." Arikado said.

As soon as the words left Arikado's mouth, the entire Castle began to tremble. A bright light enveloped the room, and Marco's vision turned white.

Then he felt reality come apart at the seams.

This was the power of Dracula's Castle!? A weakened Castle none the less!? And he made it obey him!?

This was nothing like a portal created by dimensional scissors. The Castle was literally tearing the universe asunder, shredding the fabric of time and space, all to accomplish the incredibly simple task of sending Marco back out of the Castle. It seemed a tad excessive to be honest.

The light faded, and Marco found himself standing in front of a torii. Looking around, Marco realised that he was back in the shrine where he started. He turned his gaze skyward, and saw that the eclipse was coming to a close, as only a tiny portion of the sun was still covered by the moon. Even though a solar eclipse only lasts a few minutes and Marco had been in the Castle for several hours. Maybe times flows different between dimensions or something.

"We're back." Hekapoo said. Marco turned to see her and Arikado standing right behind him.

"Yes. You've done well." Arikado said, though he eyed Marco curiously.

"What about the Castle? Is it still in the eclipse?" Marco asked, looking back at the sun and moon, no longer touching. The eclipse had ended, but Marco could still feel the Castle. It felt like it was calling him home.

"Yes." Arikado said. He paused as consider how to continue, "It... awaits the coming of its new master. Someday, someone will assume the form of Dracula again. When that time will be, I do not know."

" **WHAT!?** " Hekapoo shouted, her voice filled with pure unbridled rage. Flames covered her entire body and her eyes turned pure yellow. She stomped towards Arikado, burning holes in the stone pavement with each step. Even though he was not the target of her anger, Marco decided it wise step back from Hekapoo.

"This was suppose to be a permanent solution! You said that sealing the Castle would prevent Dracula from **ever** coming back!" She screamed at Arikado, stopping less than a foot in front of him. Arikado winced slightly at the heat coming off of Hekapoo, but did not back down.

"The position of Dark Lord is just that, a position." Arikado said with forced calm, "Dracula _is_ dead, but someone can take up his mantle."

"So you mean that any schmuck with delusions of grandeur can declare themself the new Dracula!? And this is suppose to make me feel better!?" Hekapoo asked incredulously.

"No!" Arikado snarled, his patience spent, "The only way to inherit the title of Dark Lord is to become the master of the Castle. As long as it is sealed within the eclipse, it is nearly unreachable. Beyond even that, the Castle will only allow itself to be controlled by someone it deems worthy. Such candidates are far and few between."

"Wait a minute!' Marco said. Arikado turned to face the human and his eyes widened, as he realised what he just said, "That can't be right. _I_ was able to command the Castle. Clearly it isn't _that_ picky."

"Arikado. You've been promising to explain what's going on since we first arrived in the Castle." Hekapoo said, no longer shouting but she spoke with venom, "I think it's high time you gave us some goddamn answers."

Marco walked toward the pair, glaring at Arikado. He stopped a couple feet away from Hekapoo, the heat coming from her flames keeping from coming any closer. He too wanted to know what the hell was going on. Arikado gave a sigh of defeat and stepped away from Hekapoo, her flames dying down as he did so.

"Very well." Arikado said, "First, I want you to know that I had good reasons for keeping the two of you in the dark. I had a plan, one that wouldn't have worked if you knew what was going on. Unfortunately, it failed anyway. And now I have no true reason to keep certain information from you."

He paused, and turned to look at Marco. As Arikado stared at him, Marco realised that the man look... sorry.

"When the Castle was sealed, Dracula truly died. As with many creatures when they die, his soul passed on and entered into the cycle of reincarnation." Arikado explained, "Graham Jones believed himself to be the reincarnation of Dracula. But he was wrong."

"I was not lying earlier when I said that Castle only allows those who are worthy to command it." Arikado continued. As he spoke, he walked closer to Marco, "When Graham perished, the Castle was weakened and desperate. So when it felt Marco's soul, it listened to his orders. Normally, it would not obey him as he is now."

' _As I am now?_ ' Marco thought, confused.

"However... even weakened it would not obey just anyone with dark powers." Arikado said slowly, "In fact, in such a vulnerable state there is only one person who it would listen to. Dracula Himself."

"W-what are you?" Hekapoo asked.

"I had my suspicions when Marco first absorbed the soul of the skeleton, however I could not be certain until the Castle recognised him." Arikado said.

"Are- are you saying that I'm..." Marco trailed off, not wanting to complete the sentence. Hekapoo stared at him in shock, and Marco saw a hint of fear in her eyes. Arikado stepped directly between them, blocking Marco's view of Hekapoo.

"Yes." Arikado said, "You are the reincarnation of Count Dracula."

-000-

A week had passed since Star and Janna first began their lessons with Sofía. In that time, Star had obtained moderate competency with a whip. She was no longer at risk of hurting herself when she swung it, but Sofía still didn't think that Star was skilled enough to learn the Morning Star yet. Sofía insisted that Star do all her training with the leather whip, since the Morning Star was too dangerous to train with. While Star could understand where the hunter was coming from, she _had_ accidentally caused large scale property damage with her spells before, it still left her feeling a bit frustrated. Unlike magic, which was a simple as knowing the spell name and somatic components, learning how to use a new weapon was a slow process.

On the flip side, Janna's magic training was coming along great. She had already managed to freeze water, and was currently trying to learn how to create ice out of thin air. Twirling was the key to it all, but there was also a lot of academic work involved. Sofía had brought several spell books detailing how to manipulate the power of frost, as well as a couple of thick tomes on the nature of magic that weren't technically required reading but still contained stuff that Janna should probably know if she was going to be a mage. It was quickly reminding Janna of schoolwork, only a thousand times more complicated. Still, Janna wasn't stupid, her poor grades were because she simply didn't care about school. So while spellcasting may be a thousand times more complex than school, Janna was willing to put in a thousand times more effort.

Today however, neither of the two teenagers were doing their normal training. Instead, they were in Star's room, listening to Sofía explain what exactly she was training them to defend themselves against. Star and Janna sat on the bed, while Sofía stood and talked.

"Night Creatures aren't like normal monsters, first of all they aren't even alive. As the name implies, they primarily come out at night and shun the sun. For some, sunlight is deadly to them, some are merely weakened by it, while still others are simply inactive during the day." Sofía explained, "Additionally, they are all weak to holy items. But, beyond these key traits, Night Creatures are a diverse group, containing demons, undead, plants, and more."

"Demons are Night Creatures?" Star asked, confused. Tom was a demon and he had never been bothered by the sun.

"Not all demons, but many are. Also, even the demons that aren't Night Creatures share many of the same characteristics, such as the weakness to holy items." Sofía answered, "However, we are not going to be discussing demons today. Instead, we shall be talking about vampires."

Both Star and Janna sat up a little straighter.

"As I'm sure you know by now, vampires are extremely fast and strong. Physically, not even the strongest of monsters can hope to match them. They can survive injuries that would most assuredly kill a normal creature. Decapitation and piercing their hearts are the most reliable means of killing a vampire. On top of all this, vampires also possess a myriad of magic powers. They can fly, walk on walls and ceilings, turn into bats, turn into mist, hypnotise people, heal themselves with blood, and probably a few more things I'm forgetting." Sofía told them.

"So, basically they're the nastiest things in the universe?" Janna said.

"They're up there." Sofía replied, "Just keep in mind that not all vampires are equal, and more powerful vampires have access to abilities that weaker ones don't. The ones that attacked you were pretty weak as far vampires are concerned. I'm not saying that they were bottom of the barrel, but vampires can be far, _far_ more powerful. Also, age doesn't affect power that much, let me make that clear. A century old vampire is not guaranteed to be stronger than a decade old one."

"Just how powerful can vampires get?" Star asked.

"As powerful as a member of the Magic High Commission, maybe even stronger." Sofía answered, "But such vampires are rare."

"That's... pretty strong." Star said.

"Fortunately, vampires have some rather crippling weaknesses. Sunlight kills them, so if avoid going outside at night, you'll be safe." Sofía said.

"Does that mean they can't enter a house unless they're invited in?" Janna asked.

"No, that's just a story. There's nothing stopping a vampire from breaking down a wall to eat someone while they sleep." Sofía responded, "Which is why I set up a protective barrier around this house. If a Night Creature enters it, the barrier will zap them."

"When did you do that?" Janna asked.

"On the first day. I probably should have mentioned it early." Sofía said.

"If I hadn't asked about vampires being invited into houses, would you have thought to mention it all?" Janna asked.

"...Let's get back to talking about vampires." Sofía's non-answer told them everything they needed to know, but there was no way she was going to admit that she completely forgot out loud.

"Just let me grab Marco first." Star said, as should stood up, "He's gonna need to know how to fight vampires too."

"I thought your other two friends weren't interested in becoming vampire hunters?" Sofía asked.

"Yeah, but me and Marco always go on adventures together, so if I wind up fighting any vampires then Marco probably will too. So he kinda needs to know how to kill a vamp." Star said. She then left the room to fetch Marco, leaving Janna and Sofía alone.

"So, you set up a magic barrier around the Diaz house." Janna said.

"Alchemical barrier actually. But yes." Sofía responded.

"You mind putting up one at my home? Just so I don't wind up getting eaten in my sleep." Janna asked.

"I don't see why not. Where do you live?" Sofía answered, hoping that Janna hadn't already told her and she just forgot.

As Janna gave the hunter her address, Star returned with Marco in tow. Sofía watched Marco as he sat down on the bed next to Star. She hadn't seen that much of him, which was odd since she'd been coming over to his house everyday for the past week. Sitting down in front of her, Sofía noticed something about Marco that she hadn't before. The boy had a strange presence, one that she had never seen anything like. It reminded her of a vampire in some ways, but at the same time it was completely different. While it wasn't super obvious, Sofía was still surprised she hadn't noticed before. Then again, she had never actually been in the same room as Marco since the night they met, and the vampires would have overpowered his aura with their own.

"Um, Sofía are you okay?" Star asked. Sofía was suddenly brought back to reality, she realised that she got lost in thought when she was suppose to be teaching them about vampires. She could ponder Marco's bizarre presence later. It seemed unlikely that the boy was dangerous, even if the aura came from him seemed dark in nature. Sofía knew perfectly well that not everyone with dark powers was evil, plus he might not even know that he possessed said powers.

"Right, sorry. Where were we? Ah, Vampires." Sofía said, "In addition to sunlight, vampires are also harmed by running water. It won't kill them immediately, but-"

"Shouldn't you start over?" Star interupted, "Marco wasn't here for the beginning."

"It's fine Star. You don't need to start over on my account." Marco said. Janna raised an eyebrow at that.

Before anyone could say anything else, the conversation was interrupted by muffled music coming from Sofía's coat. Reaching into the coat, she pulled out a vibrating compact mirror, the source of the music.

"Hang on, I have to take this." Sofía said, flipping open the mirror and walking away from the trio. They hear her speak to someone over the mirror, but in another language, Russian from the sound of it. Unfortunately, none of them spoke Russian. Well, Marco and Star don't, who knows if Janna can. Before long, Sofía finished her call. She walked back to them smiling excitedly.

"Lessons are cancelled for today." She said.

"Why?" Janna asked.

"I was hoping you'd ask." Sofía said, her smile growing larger, "My family once owned a very powerful weapon. It was created to destroy the forces of the night. However, during the Second World War, it was lost. Later on, we learned that it was stolen by Nazis."

"Nazis?" Marco repeated.

"Yep, the Nazis stole countless artifacts and artworks. After the Third Reich fell, a lot of these stolen treasures went missing." Sofía explained, "My mother figured out that the Soviet Union came into possession of the weapon, but unfortunately she could never find out where it was. Russia is a big place after all. But, I just got word from one of my informants that its last known location was an abandoned Soviet research facility in Siberia, and I now have the location of said research facility."

"...Wait, you're from earth?" Janna asked, slightly shocked.

"Really, that's what you're focusing on? I just told you about an ancient vampire killing weapon that was stolen by freaking Nazis and smuggled across the globe." Sofía said, then sighed, "Yes, I'm from earth, Spain specifically, as was every Lecarde before me."

"I don't know what most of that meant, but it sure sounds interesting." Star said.

"Thank you. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to got check and see if it's actually there." Sofía said.

"Can we come? It sounds exciting." Star said, hopping off the bed.

"Star, she's going to the middle of nowhere, nothing interesting is going to happen." Marco said.

"I don't see any reason you three can't come along." Sofía said, and pulled a pair of dimensional scissors out of her coat. The scissors were blue, with gold edges and handles shaped like bat wings.

"I'll pass." Janna said, pulling a book titled ' _Ice Magic for Beginners_ ' out of seemingly nowhere, "Have fun poking around the frozen hellscape that is Siberia."

"It's nearly summer, it won't be that cold." Sofía said, cutting open a portal and stepping through it.

"Come on." Star said to Marco before hopping through the portal herself. Marco gave Janna a look that said 'See what I have to put up with' and followed Star.

Emerging from the portal, the three found themselves in a lightly wooded area. Pine trees dotted the land around them, and an old road stretched on in front of them, going deeper into the woods. While Sofía had been right about it not being a frozen hellscape, as there wasn't a flake of snow in sight, it was still far colder than Echo Creek. Shivering from a gust of chilled wind, Star was quickly beginning to regret not bringing a jacket.

"Here." Marco said, taking off his hoodie and handing it to Star. She looked back and forth between the red clothing and Marco. As much as she wanted to take the jacket, she also didn't want Marco to be cold. But he certainly didn't look cold, despite wearing only a T-shirt now. Star took the hoodie and put it on. Immediately, she felt a lot warmer, maybe a little too warm, and why was her heart going crazy?

"Thanks." She said, turning away to hide her blush.

"Come on!" Sofía shouted from up ahead, "The research facility is just a little ways up the road!"

The three of them walked down the old road. It was clear that it hadn't been used in ages, probably not since the Soviet Union collapsed. After a while, they arrived at their destination. The building wasn't too big, only a single story, with a small and empty parking lot in front. A chain fence, partially collapsed, surrounded the research facility. The building itself was completely rundown, with broken windows and other signs of disuse.

"I was kind of expecting something... more." Marco said, looking at the small structure.

"Yeah, it's kind of like looking for Excalibur in an abandoned Walmart." Sofía said, walking towards the building, "But, we haven't seen the inside yet. Who knows what to expect."

The inside was about what you'd expect from the outside. Everything was dilapidated, broken chairs were strewn about, old deteriorated papers sat on desks, computers that would never work again filled entire rooms, and unsurprisingly, there was no power. Due to its small size, it didn't take long to search the place from top to bottom, twice.

"I don't think we're going to find what we're looking for. I doubt there's anywhere in here they could be hiding it." Sofía said during their third look around.

"Sorry we didn't find anything." Star said.

"It's fine, I don't there was ever anything to find. To be honest, this place doesn't seem like the kind of place they'd store an ancient vampire killing weapon. It looks like a computer lab." Sofía said, "Unfortunately, that was my last lead."

"Hey! Guys, I think I found something!" Marco shouted from the next room over. Star and Sofía practically ran over to Marco to see what he had found. Once they reached him, they saw that he had moved several filing cabinets and a desk away from the wall and had his ear and hands placed against it, "I think this is a fake wall, listen."

He knocked on the wall. The sound it produced made it clear that it was made of metal, and that there was empty space behind it. Sofía walked up to the wall and Marco moved aside. Twirling briefly, Sofía shot a blast of frigid air at the wall freezing it solid, and then kicked it as hard as possible. The hidden door flew inward and crashed against the far wall, before tumbling downward into a deep shaft. Sofía looked down the secret elevator shaft, and strained her eyes to see the bottom, but unfortunately it was too dark.

"Oh, now things are getting interesting." Sofía said with a grin.

"Nice work Marco. How did you figure out that the wall was fake?" Star asked.

"I tripped and fell into it." Marco said. Another lie, the soul of a Peeping Eye allowed him to locate the hidden door.

"I can't tell how far down it goes." Sofía said, taking a flashlight out of her coat and shining it down the shaft. However, the light from the torch failed to reach the bottom, "Well, only one way to find out."

With those words, Sofía jumped into the elevator shaft and plummeted into the darkness below.

"Did she just-" Star was cut off by Marco jumping into the shaft after Sofía. Star stood still for a moment in surprise, before following suite and leaping down the hole with an excited whoop.

A hundred and fifty feet down, the trio hit the bottom, thankfully without injury, despite the fall. Upon exiting the elevator shaft, the room they found themselves in was enormous. Sofía's flashlight barely illuminated any of it.

"What is this place?" Marco asked.

"Can't tell, it's too dark." Sofía said, pointing her flashlight upward to see if she could at least see the ceiling. She couldn't, it was too high.

"Don't worry, I got this." Star said, raising her wand above her head, "Gigawatt Power Surge!"

Electricity crackled along the wand, before surging outwards into the room. After a moment, the lights flickered to life, rejuvenated by the spell. With the power finally on, they could make out the room they were in.

It appeared to be a massive hanger, but instead of military vehicles there were wooden crates. Mountains of crates filled the entire room, and it was a large room. The ceiling was at least a hundred feet high. The space between the side walls was nearly double that, and the back wall was an unknown distance away, blocked from view by the copious amount of boxes.

"Holy crap, look at all of these." Marco said, walking towards a crate and prying the top off. Inside were several rifles, "The weapon you're looking for could be in anyone of these boxes."

"Yeah." Sofía said, annoyed. This is going to take awhile, "Better get to it then."

"What does it look like?" Star asked.

"Oh, right. You see it's-" Sofía was interrupted by a loud crashed coming from the back of the room.

The crashing continued and grew louder and closer. The source of the noises was hidden from sight by the crates that filled the hanger. As it approached, the ground began to shack. Marco quickly rejoined Star and Sofía, all three of them readying themselves of a fight.

A particularly large pile boxes was knocked down as a 40 foot tall mech came into view. It was large and blocky, resembling a tank with legs more than anything. It had a main body, with two bird-like legs, and a sort of head attached to the front that moved separately. A colossal railgun was mounted on the right-hand side, while a large disk was fastened to the left side.

"What the hell is that!?" Marco yelled, stepping back.

"Looks like some kind of automated vehicle. Probably the reason this secret hanger exists in the first place." Sofía said, "But why is it up and running?"

"Oh, that's probably my fault." Star rubbed the back of her head sheepishly, "I must have accidentally turned it on with my spell."

The mech's disk moved up and down, before pointing directly at the trio. With a metallic roar, part of the mech's knee opened and three missiles fired out of it. The trio scattered in an attempt to avoid the rockets, but each of the missiles homed in on one of them. Marco jumped atop a small stack of crates, one of the missiles flew at him and he leaped away at the last second. The missile hit the crates, and exploded. Though he managed to dodge the rocket itself, the explosion sent Marco hurdling through the air, and he crashed into a pile of boxes. Star raised her wand and fired a spell at the the missile trained on her, shooting it out of the sky. But the shock wave from the detonation knocked Star off her feet.

"My next question was going to be if it was hostile." Marco groaned as he picked himself up from the pile of broken crates, "But I guess that answers it."

Sofía dashed backwards, then charged at the missile pursuing her. Leaping into the air, the hunter landed on the missile, then kicked off, propelling herself into the air and sending it crashing into the ground. Whilst in midair, Sofía twirled, creating several large icicles. Faster than a speeding bullet, the icicles shot forward, and collided with the mech. The ice shattered on impact, and caused it to stumble back slightly, but ultimately failed to penetrate the tank's thick armour.

"Strawberry Annihilation!" Star shouted, firing a burst of magical energy at the mech. However the spell only bounced harmless off its armour.

The mech ignored the princess, if it even noticed her at all, and instead turned to face Sofía. As it turned, it knocked over another pile of crates, crushing several underfoot. Raising its head towards the hunter, the sound of automatic gunfire filled the air. A hail of bullets from two guns located on it mech's head shot towards Sofía. She darted about the hanger to try and avoid the spray of gunfire. Weaving through the bullets, she ducked behind a mountain of boxes. The wooden crates exploded as the gunfire shredded through them, but the mech still lost track of Sofía, the disk rapidly pointing in all different directions.

Using the power of a soul, Marco conjured a grenade in his hand, and lobbed it at the mech. That disk seemed to be important, what with the way it moved about. So, he aimed the grenade at it. The explosive went off right next to the disk, but as the smoke cleared it was clear that it didn't do any damage. It was after all one of Marco's weaker offensive souls, but it was also one of the only ones he could use right now. Both Star and Sofía were present, so he couldn't exactly start blasting the tank with lighting, but he could have reasonably found a grenade among the spilled contents of the crates.

However, while it failed to damage the mech, it did attract the damn thing's attention. With loud, heavy steps that shook the ground, the tank turned around to face Marco. Once more its guns roared to life, and Marco was forced to try and outrun machine gun fire. As fast he could, Marco ran for cover, while bullets tore up the ground just behind his feet. But before he could be turned into Swiss cheese, a massive chunk of ice, almost as large as the mech itself, was conjured into the air above the machine. Pulled downward by gravity, the ice crashed on top of the tank, shattering into pieces. The mech buckled under the force, ceasing its gunfire and allowing Marco to hide behind some crates. The disk moved about, but the machine was unable to locate either Marco or Sofía.

"Raspberry Panzerfaust!" Star yelled, the handle of her wand growing in length as she mounted it over her shoulder like a bazooka. She aimed it at the mech and fired a magical rocket. It soared through the air, colliding with the mech, and created a huge explosion. Much like their previous attacks, it didn't cause any noticeable harm, simple leaving a scorch mark on the tank's side. Frustrated, Star fired off several more rockets at the mech. Unsurprisingly, none of them did anything.

Devoid of any other targets, the mech turned to confront her. Rather than firing bullets or missiles at the princess, it simply charged her. Star was a low priority target, not worth wasting ammo on. Unlike Sofía, none of her attacks had so much as inconvenienced it. Marco had targeted its radome disk, that alone warranted the use of its guns. With two higher priority targets nearby, it needed to conserve ammo, so the mech decided to deal with Star by simply stomping on her.

The machine ran towards the princess with a surprising amount of speed. However, before it could reach her, the floor in front of it was suddenly covered by a sheet of slippery ice. As the mech stepped onto the ice, its feet slide across the frozen ground. But only briefly, as spikes inside its feet came out and stabbed into the ground, halting it in place.

Atop a mountain of boxes stood Sofía. Raising her hands into the air, a blue magic circle appeared in front of her. Sofía started twirling, and a giant wolf head made of ice came out of the magic circle. The wolf head shot towards the mech, closely followed by three more.

The mech turned to face Sofía just as the first wolf head was summoned. It fired its guns to try and shoot the ice wolves out of the air. Bullets shattered the first two wolf heads, but were unable to destroy the third one, which crashed into the tank. The mech was knocked back by the impact, and its left side was exposed to the fourth ice wolf. The ice wolf slammed directly into its radome disk, and the mech released a metallic screech.

For the first time since the battle began, the mech sustained damage. Most of it was covered in a thick metal armour that made a tank look like it was made of cardboard. But the radome disk was far more lightly armoured, it had to be in order to function. Protecting its radome disk was top priority, as it was the only thing that allowed the mech to see. So, while the damage done to the radome was relatively minor, it still elevated Sofía's threat level.

Once the machine regained its balance, it turned to re-engage the hunter. Attached to the underside of its head, roughly the equivalent of a chin, was a powerful laser cannon. The cannon came online, and a beam of white energy fired from it. The mech moved its head and the laser sweeped across the room, towards Sofía with the intention of cutting her in half. Leaping out of the way at the last second, the laser sliced through the boxes she had been standing on. The crates erupted into a tremendous explosion, as weapons stored inside were detonated by the laser. Sofía was hurled into the air from the force of the explosion and smashed into the ceiling above, before falling to the ground.

Marco watched in horror from behind a stack of crates. The fight was not going well, and if this kept up one of them could easily wind up dead. If he used his souls, he could easily turn the fight around. But then both Star and Sofía would learn about his magic, and Sofía was a vampire hunter, she dealt with the forces of darkness regularly. If she saw him use his powers, she might realize they were to some extent, that they're dark powers. Marco had been avoiding her when she came over to teach Star and Janna for just that reason. But keeping his secret wasn't as important as their lives, even if he was worried that Sofía might try to kill him afterwards.

Just as Marco was about to call upon the power of a soul, he saw something land next to the mech's foot, blown over by the explosion. It was a spear, blue in color with gold trim. At the head of the spear, just below the blade, were two bat-like wings, with a golden cross in between them. It reminded Marco heavily of Sofía's dimensional scissors. What's more, he could feel the spear's immense holy aura. It had to be the weapon they came here to find.

So, instead of using his soul powers, Marco rushed over to the weapon. Unfortunately, it was only about a yard from the mech's foot. Thankfully, Star blasted the machine with a spell, distracting it just long enough for Marco to rush in and grab the spear. Moving as fast as his feet could carry him, Marco dashed over to the spear, picking it up just as the mech noticed him. But as soon as he touched it, his hands felt like they caught fire. The spear's holy power burned his flesh, causing him to almost drop it. Why though? Marco had used holy weapons before without problem, even after his powers awakened. There was no way he could wield the spear like this. Fortunately, he saw Sofía pick herself up off the ground.

"Sofía! Catch!" Marco shouted, throwing the spear to her.

He did so not a moment to soon, for as soon as the spear left his hand, the mech kicked him away. Each one of its legs weighed more than an Abrams Tank, and all of that weight crashed into Marco. He could feel, as well as hear, some of his bones shatter from the impact. He was then sent flying into a pile of crates, crashing through them and coming to a stop as he smashed into another pile of crates. Thanks to the powers granted by his souls Marco fortunately wasn't killed by such an attack. Still, he really didn't feel like moving after that, so he decided to sit the rest of the fight out.

Sofía caught the spear just as the mech kicked Marco. With her family's ancestral weapon in hand, the hunter charged straight at the mech. Noticing her approach, it fired its machine guns at her once more. Sofía stopped and spun the spear in front of her, deflecting the hail of bullets. The gunfire stopped, and compartments on its knee opened and fired three missiles at Sofía. Just like last time, the hunter charged the rockets. She jumped onto the first missile, using it as a stepping stone before she moved to the next missile and the one after that, before finally jumping at the mech itself. Arcing through the air, she thrusted her spear downwards at the mech, the magical blade stabbed into the machine, easily piercing its armour. Then, Sofía channeled her magic through the spear, directly into the mech. The weapon amplified the power of the magic, flash freezing the entirety of the tank from the inside.

Sofía leaped from the machine, landing gracefully on the ground. She then slashed at its leg, the blade of the spear slicing through the metal like a hot knife through butter. Without the support of its leg, the mech toppled to ground. Sofía quickly dashed backwards to avoid being crushed under it. As it hit the ground, the machine smashed to pieces. Sofía let out a sigh of relief that the fight was over, but was quickly brought back to reality by sound of Star yelling.

"Marco!" Star shouted, rushing over to her friend. He was lying motionless, propped up against a pile of broken crates. Fear urged Star to go faster, she needed to see that he was okay. Sofía joined her side as they reached him. Star didn't know what to do, she needed to see if he was alright, but didn't know how. In the state he was in, she might hurt him if she wasn't careful. So all she could do was ask, "Are you okay!?"

Marco responded with a noise that was halfway between a cough and a wheeze. Sofía quickly grabbed a High Potion from her coat, and moved next to him. Carefully, she raised his head, and brought the medicine to his lips so that he could drink it. The magical concoction healed him as he drank it, mending bones and closing wounds. Once the last drop was gone, Marco sat up, coughing from the potion's vile taste.

"Take it easy." Sofía said, "How are you feeling?"

"Better. Just, _really_ sore." Marco said, wincing slightly as he tried to stand.

His attempt was cut short, as Star moved forward and pulled him into a tight embrace. Marco was taken by surprise at first, but quickly returned the hug with a small smile. However, as sweet as it was, being squeezed didn't do his aching body anything favors.

"Uh, Star." Marco said reluctantly after a moment, "Could you let go now? Really sore."

"Ohmygosh! I'm sorry!" Star said, letting go of Marco, "Did I hurt? Do you have any broken bones?"

"I'm fine Star, you didn't hug me that tightly." Marco replied.

"You need to be more careful. I know that sounds rich coming from me, but seriously, that could've killed you." Star said, "The robot kicking you, not my hug."

"I got that. And, yeah. You're right." Marco admitted, "If it weren't for Sofía and her potions, things would be a lot worse."

"No, this is my fault. I shouldn't have brought you two." Sofía said. She looked at the spear in her hand, "The weapon isn't worth your lives."

"Hey, don't worry about. You had no way of knowing that this was going to be dangerous. Plues, we've risked our lives over way stupider stuff. Heck, we once almost died trying to pay a phone bill." Marco said, recalling their trip to Pixtopia. Sofía stared at him in confusion and tilted her head to the side slightly, "Of, speaking of the weapon, that's it right?"

"Huh, oh yes." Sofía said, holding up the spear for them to see it better, "This is the ancestral weapon of the Lecarde family. The Alucard Spear!"

"Wait, Alucard? That was the name of one of the characters in _Castlevania_." Star said, recalling the storybook she read early in the week. She then realised that she never really got around to asking Sofía if that story was true, "That's an old fairy tale, by the way."

"He was a powerful mage and swordsman, who fought alongside the Butterfly family for generations. I doesn't surprise me that his name passed into folklore." Sofía said, "This spear was crafted by him, it was meant to serve as a compliment to the Butterfly family wand."

"What do you mean?" Star asked.

"Both the wand and spear were created with one goal in mind, killing Dracula." Sofía said, and Marco's blood went cold, "They were some of the only weapons in all the universe capable of doing so. But the Alucard Spear isn't as powerful as the wand, so it merely compliments it."

Sofía continued talking, but Marco didn't hear the rest of what she said. The spearing being made to kill Dracula explained why it burned him, but there was something else on his mind right now. It had been six years since he learned about Dracula's existence, since he learned that he _is_ Dracula, and yet in all that time, he learned little to nothing about the Dark Lord or His history. He and Hekapoo rarely discussed it, Dracula was a topic both of them preferred to avoid. It was only now that learned of the Butterfly Family's ties with Dracula, that the Butterfly Family fought Dracula, that they killed Dracula. He wasn't guessing this, he knew it, he could feel it, it was a Butterfly that had killed Dracula for good. Marco's gaze slide over to his best friend, to Star Butterfly. If he fell to the darkness, if he became the Dark Lord, he knew it would be her job to kill Him.

-000-

In a remote corner of hell, a dark tower stood overlooking pools of bubbling magma. All around and even inside the pools, demons tortured the souls of the damned. Sinners, saints, or normal people, the demons didn't care who the souls once belonged to, they simply found joy in their torment. The demons here weren't soft like they were in other parts of the abyss. Here, at least, they respected the old traditions. No, they reveled in them.

From a window on the top floor of the tower, a massive figure watched the work of the fiends below. Standing well over double the height of an adult man, with the head and legs of a goat, small feathered wings, and reddish orange skin, this figure looked like how many people would envision the devil himself. Such a guess wouldn't be entirely inaccurate, for this figure was Pazuzu, one of the most powerful lords of hell. He refused to call the place the underworld, no matter what the royal family said.

As he watched his subjects torture mortal souls, a smile came to his face, or at least the closest equivalent for a goat head. However, he was interrupted by the sound of a portal opening in the room behind him. Pazuzu didn't need to look to know who exited it, he recognised the dark power they extruded. He placed a hand on the windowsill, and forced himself to suppress a shudder.

"What do want?" The demon asked, refusing to turn around.

"I have merely come to inquire if you have made a decision yet." The unwelcomed guest spoke. For the next minute, silence reigned in the room. Once the guest had grown tired of waiting for response, he spoke again, "Shall I return again tomorrow, or would you prefer more time? Please know my offer will not last forever. That is not a threat, it is merely a fact."

"Why do you want my allegiance?" Pazuzu asked.

"I have already answered that question." The guest responded. Pazuzu's grip on the windowsill tightened and the stone under his hand began to crack.

"You expect me to believe that bullshit!?" The demon yelled, "You're a goddamn vampire! I refuse to believe you're simply trying to sate your curiosity!"

"And yet it is the truth. The power of magic is weakening, and I want to know why." The vampire spoke, his tone unchanged despite Pazuzu's screaming, "I have a theory, but I cannot come to a conclusion without the Vampire Killer."

"Why do you even care if magic is on the fritz!? Our powers are unaffected." Pazuzu said.

"It is as you said, I wish to sate my curiosity." The guest said.

"Get out." Pazuzu spat. He was tired of dealing with this vampire and his lies.

"Pazuzu." The guest spoke with a commanding tone, and the demon dreaded what his next words might be, "Turn around."

Slowly, very slowly, Pazuzu let go of the windowsill and forced his body to turn and face the vampire. A tall -though still far smaller than Pazuzu-, lean man with grey skin and purple armour faced him. Glowing red eyes set in a bald head stared directly at the demon. It was a face that Pazuzu knew well, Count Olrox.

"I am not lying to you." Olrox said softly, almost pleadingly. It was a tone so unnatural for a vampire to take that it made Pazuzu even more uncomfortable, "Please, do not let this opportunity slip away as the result of such a simple mistake. You, as much as I, would benefit from this."

"...I'll think more on it." Pazuzu said after a moment.

"Very well, I'll be back in a week's time to see if you have come to decision. However, please feel free to contact me at any point before that." Olrox said. Once he had finished speaking, he sweeped his arm across the room and a portal opened in front of him. He walked into it, and it closed behind him, just like any normal portal.

Pazuzu's muscles relaxed with Olrox gone, but he still felt incredibly stressed. He turned back to the window to watch the demons below work, but couldn't find any pleasure in at the moment. Olrox's request hung over him, Pazuzu knew he would need to make a decision soon. But right now, he couldn't think straight, fear still fresh in his mind.

With a frustrated sigh, Pazuzu left the window. He would make the decision about Olrox later. Right now he needed a drink, and besides, he was busy at the moment. After all, he had a meeting with the Lucitors coming up soon.

* * *

 **I can't believe I though that this and the previous chapter were originally going to the length be a single chapter.**

 **In case it wasn't obvious, the mech was literally just an unmanned Metal Gear Rex. Hence the chapter title.**

 **I'm super worried that the opening scene doesn't make sense, I had a hard time trying to convey some of the information. So if you were confused by it, I'm very sorry, I tried my best but I'm still new to writing.**

 **Janna was originally going to join them on this little adventure, but I couldn't think of anything for her to actually do. I'm already bothered by how little Star contributed to the fight.**

 **So, Olrox has shown up. He was actually the main villain of one of** _Castlevania_ **novels, but I've unfortunately never read that book. I'm pretty sure it's only in Japanese, which I can't read. So to anybody who might have read the book, I'm sorry that Olrox will inevitably be out of character.**

 **Also, I had no way conveying it in the text, but Sofía's ringtone was _Iron Blue Intention,_ specifically the version from _Portrait of Ruin_.**

 **Finally, Season 4 of _Star Vs. The Forces of Evil_ is coming out next month! I want to say "Where did the time go" and "Why is it so far away" simultaneously. **


	7. Chapter 7: Gate of the Underworld

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or** **Castlevania.**

* * *

When it comes to the supernatural, the people of Echo Creek tend to react very bizarrely. Rather than run screaming, stare in slack-jawed bewilderment, or go home and reevaluate their views on how they think the universe works, they simply seem to accept it like it's perfectly normal. Perhaps this was because the citizens of Echo Creek are... far from normal themselves. After all, the predominant religion of the town is Otisism, which involves the worship of a giant stone opossum statue located in front of the high school.

It was the result of the townspeople's bizarre attitude towards the strange and fantastical that a police officer was willing to write up a parking ticket for a ominous black carriage drawn by a flaming horse skeleton parked in front of a local convenience store. While the officer was trying to figure out where exactly to put the ticket on the carriage, the vehicle's owner emerged from the store drinking a slushie.

Tom Lucitor had often been described as having anger issues, prone to violent fits of rage at the smallest inconvenience. But the irritation he felt at the sight of the officer giving his carriage a parking ticket was perfectly normal. Less normal were the scorch marks he burned into the pavement as he stomped towards of policewoman. Once he reached her, he tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention.

"What is _that_ for?" Tom pointed at the ticket with a scowl on his face. If he expected her to be cowed by his demonic appearance then he was sorely disappointed.

"Meter ran out." The officer said nonchalantly, jerking a thumb at the parking meter next to carriage. Sure enough, it read all zeroes.

"That's impossible! I just went in to grab a slushie!" Tom yelled. He tried to keep his anger in check so that he didn't accidentally melt the drink in question. Or set the officer on fire, Brian would be disappointed in him if that happened, "The meter must be broken. I demand that you check it!"

"That's a nice theory." The policewoman said, completely unphased by his outburst. She calmly handed him the ticket, having given up on trying to attach it to the carriage, "Here."

As she walked away, Tom's temptation to immolate the officer increased dramatically. Instead, he settled for incinerating the parking ticket. It wasn't as nearly satisfying as setting her on fire would have been, but he wasn't going to lose his temper over something as stupid as a parking ticket. Not when he had been doing so well lately. Slurping his drink unhappily, Tom climbed into his carriage which promptly started moving down the road.

That was a poor way to begin his day on earth, but Tom was adamant to not let it ruin his day. After all, this was the first time he'd been out of the palace in weeks, and he was going to enjoy it. It was for this reason that Tom was taking the scenic route to the Diaz house, his destination, instead of simply heading straight there from the underworld. Normally he didn't particularly enjoy the sights of Echo Creek, finding the place exceedingly pedestrian, but right now he found the change in scenery rather enjoyable.

By the time the carriage reached the Diaz house, Tom's mood had improved quite a bit, thanks to a combination of petting his bunny and drinking his sugary slushie. He was also happy that he would soon see Marco again. While their relationship started off rocky, in that Tom tried to murder him, they had grown a lot closer and now Tom considered the human boy to be his best friend. Probably because he didn't actually have any other friends, Brian didn't count, but that was neither here nor there.

Tom exited his carriage and started walking towards the house. His thoughts were filled with ideas of what exactly he and Marco were going to do today. Briefly, he remembered the _other_ reason he had come, but he pushed that aside. That could wait until later, once he had finished hanging out with Marco.

Then Tom took another step forward and was suddenly zapped by powerful holy electricity. For a solid second his body was assaulted by the energy, once it ceased he fell to ground, unconscious. So far, Tom could safely say he was not enjoying his trip to earth.

-000-

Marco sat on the couch in the living room, flipping through the television channels trying to find something to watch. At current, Star was in the backyard with Sofía practicing with the whip, Janna stayed at home today, and Marco was starting to understand why Star got annoyed when he spent all his time exercising or studying. Speaking of, he finished his workout early today, in fact he'd been finishing early everyday for a while now, and he was no longer exhausted and sweaty when he was done. While Marco was happy that he was getting stronger, this also meant he needed to adopt a more intense workout routine. He was also caught up with studying, so at the moment he had nothing to do.

So, he was channel surfing. He dearly wished for a distraction soon, as he really didn't want to be alone with his thoughts right now, the recent revelation of the Butterfly family weighed heavily on his mind. His wishes were answered as he heard the crackle of electricity -a noise he was very familiar with- and pained screams coming from out front.

Marco bolted from the couch to the front door in the blink of an eye. He reached the door and slammed it open, breaking its hinges in the process. Almost immediately, he noticed the figure lying face down on the driveway, and rushed over to them. As he ran he kept his eyes peeled, looking for the assailant responsible, but bizarrely saw nothing. Once he reached the prone person, Marco promptly checked to see it they were okay. Upon closer inspection, he recognised Tom, and his concern grew, both for his sort-of friend and himself. Tom was not weak, and that meant that whatever was able to knock him out must be pretty powerful. Marco rapidly looked around for the assailant, expecting an attack at any moment. Fortunately, the cavalry arrived in the form of Sofía jumping over the roof from the backyard, brandishing the Alucard Spear.

"What's going on?" She asked Marco upon landing on the ground. Her eyes darted about, searching for the threat.

"Don't know, but something knocked a demon out cold." Marco answered hurriedly.

"Demon? Oh, that must have been what triggered the barrier." Sofía said, relaxing. Though she did eye Tom suspiciously.

"Barrier? What barrier?" Marco asked, confused and still on edge.

"I set up a barrier around this house to protect it from Night Creatures." Sofía explained.

"But Tom isn't a Night Creature." Marco said, still confused.

"Are you sure?" Sofía asked, narrowing her eyes at the demon. Marco responded by pointing skyward at the very hot, very bright midday sun, "...Right. Then it's probably cause he's a demon. They share a lot of similarities to Night Creatures, so the barrier must not have been able to tell the difference."

"Doesn't that seem like kind of a flaw?" Marco said.

"It's more of a feature. Even normal demons are usually bad news." Sofía said. Marco really couldn't argue with that, given his own experiences with the ones he encountered in Hekapoo's dimension, "So, is he a friend of yours?"

"Yeah. Well, sort of." Marco said as he thought of how exactly to describe their relationship. In the end he chose to say, "I don't want him to die."

"He'll be fine. The barrier merely incapacitates." Sofía said, "But, uh, sorry about zapping him."

There was yelp, and both of them turned to see Star tumble down the side of the roof. She reached the edge and smacked onto the driveway below, only to immediately jump to her feet, clutching the training whip in her hand.

"Where's the bad guy!?" Star yelled, looking around feverishly.

"No bad guy, Star. Just Tom." Marco said.

"Oh." Star said, disappointed. She had been eager to test out her new whip skills, "Can I whip him?"

"As much as he might like that, no." Marco said, bending down and grabbing the prince under the arms.

"Oh." Star repeated, disappointed.

"Help me carry him inside." Marco said. Star moved towards them and grabbed Tom's legs. Together they carried him into the house and placed him on the couch, passing through the broken front door in the process.

' _I need to fix that._ ' Marco thought.

"So, what happened?" Star asked once they set Tom down.

"The barrier zaps demons too." Sofía said.

"Um, doesn't that seem a little racist, maybe?" Star asked. It hardly seemed fair to zap someone for being a demon, it's not like they chose to be one. Of course, the same could be said for most Night Creatures, but the difference was that demons weren't blights on the natural world.

"Uh, it's a flaw, it's not suppose to do that." Sofía responded. Marco's head shot up, but Sofía was already out of the room.

"Wow, she moves fast." Star said, turning to look at Tom's unconscious form, "You wanna draw on his face?"

However, her plans were dashed, and Tom's dignity saved, as the demon groaned and started to stir. Slowly, he opened his eyes and brought a hand up to rub his aching forehead. His skull felt like there was a live orchestra, one that favored the brass a bit too fondly, going on inside it.

"What happened?" Tom winced from a stab of pain in his head.

"You got zapped by a magic barrier." Marco said, and in the distance he faintly heard Sofía shout the word 'Alchemical'.

"Why?" Tom asked.

"It thought you were a Night Creature." Marco said.

"I am not!" Tom shot to his feat, very offended. He immediately regretted doing so, as he collapsed back onto the couch clutching a hand to his head in agony. Marco quickly placed a hand on Tom's chest to make sure he didn't try to stand up again, not that he had any plans to.

"Woah, slow down there buddy. I'm gonna go get you some aspirin." Marco said, then departed for the kitchen. Leaving Star and Tom alone.

"Hey." Tom said awkwardly, after a moment. Star gave a small wave in response. The two of them then spent the remaining time until Marco returned staring at the walls and not at each other.

Before long, Marco returned with a glass of water and some aspirin, saving Star and Tom from the awkward situation they found themselves in. He handed the cup and pills to Tom, who promptly swallowed them.

"So, why are you here, Tom?" Marco asked once the demon was done drinking.

"I just thought we could hang out like we normally do." Tom said.

"We haven't done that in weeks." Marco said. The last time they hung out was before his trip to Hekapoo's dimension. Marco assumed that Tom got bored of him, and just stopped.

"Yeah sorry, but it's not my fault. I haven't been allowed to leave the palace in like a month." Tom said.

"Oh, so you got grounded." Star said with a sly grin.

"Wh- No!" Tom protested, "My parents haven't let me leave because some dumb politics."

"Politics?" Marco repeated, confused as to why that would prevent Tom from leaving his palace.

"Yeah, some of the demon lords are unhappy or something, I don't really pay attention." Tom said. His parents tried to explain the gravity of the situation, but Tom didn't really care. He planned to avoid as much government stuff as he could until he was forced to become king and it became his life. Though he did recall one important piece of information "I think my parents are worried about a coup or something. It's not important."

"That sounds pretty frigging important!" Marco objected. He suddenly understood why Tom's parents wouldn't want him to leave the protection of their castle. Another thought occurred to him and his voice took on a panicked edge, "You didn't sneak out did you!? Tell me your parents know you're here!"

"Relax! They know I'm here, so chill!" Tom said quickly. He sat, without headache this time, and placed a hand on Marco's shoulder to try and calm him down.

"They gave you permission though right? You didn't just leave them a note or something telling them that you left. I don't want an army of demons breaking down my door looking for you." Marco said.

"Yes. They gave me permission to come here." Tom said, exasperated. Marco opened his mouth to say something, but Tom cut him off. He figured Marco was probably going to ask why his parents let him leave if things were so bad in the underworld, and decided to answer it preemptively, "Look, the political thing is going smoother now. In fact, my parents are going to meet with some of the demon lords soon, things can't be that bad anymore. So, my parents thought it was okay to let me come here."

' _That, and the other reason they let me come._ ' Tom thought.

Marco closed his mouth, and Tom was glad that he guessed Marco's objection and was able to answer it. The human scratched his head as he tried to think of what to say next.

"So, what do you want to do?" Marco asked. He couldn't remember what he and Tom used to do when they hang out.

"You wanna play some video games?" Tom said, smiling. After his run in with the barrier, he decided that something that wasn't physically strenuous would be best.

"Sure." Marco responded, and started towards the stairs. Getting up from the couch, Tom followed not far behind him.

"You two have fun." Star said, then continued with less enthusiasm, "I'm, gonna go practice with Sofía some more."

"Who's Sofía?" Tom asked, as Star walked towards the backyard.

"Vampire hunter. Star's training with her." Marco said.

"To fight vampires!?" Tom asked, eyes wide with shock, "Doesn't that seem really dangerous!? Even for her?"

"Look, I agree with you but-" Marco stopped short and turned around to look at Tom, "Wait a minute, you know about vampires?"

"Yeah man, that sort of thing is pretty well known in the underworld." Tom said.

"Huh." Was Marco's only response. Come to think of it, Tom did know seem to know what a Night Creature was, enough to be offended by being compared to one. Marco supposed it made sense. Back when He was still around, Dracula was pretty much the ruler of the underworld, so its residents would probably know more about Him and His kin than the rest of the universe. Marco was tempted to ask Tom if he knew anything about the Dark Lord, but couldn't think of a way to ask without coming off as suspicious.

By now, they had reached the door of Marco's room. The two of them entered and Tom sat on the beanbag at the foot of the bed while Marco got the game set up. After a moment of fumbling about with the TV trying to get it on the right channel, he got the system up and ready. Then Marco looked at his library of games to pick what they were going to play, and a problem presented itself. It had been sixteen years since Marco last played any of these games.

Staring at the games, he realised that he didn't even remember what most of them were about, and he certainly didn't know which ones were multiplayer.

"Why don't you pick?" Marco turned to face Tom and gestured towards the games. The demon's face split into an evil grin, and Marco got the feeling he just made a terrible mistake.

"Any game?" Tom asked, still grinning maniacally. Marco responded with a nod so small that it was almost unnoticeable. Tom immediately went for a specific game, not even bothering to browse first. Looking at the game he picked, Marco released a small groan.

Even after sixteen years, he still remembered that game, such was the trauma it inflicted on him. It was a cart racer, one that Marco absolutely sucked at. Now, he was very much regretting letting Tom chose the game. But it wasn't like he could suggest something different. So, he took it and put the game in the console, then took a seat on the floor next to Tom who had claimed the beanbag chair again.

The controller felt awkward and foreign in Marco's hands, he had to watch Tom to remember how to hold it properly. He knew he was going to lose, and lose hard. Not only had it Marco not played any video games since he went to Hekapoo's dimension, but he was playing a game he was awful at even before. As he awkwardly tried to select a racer, Marco could only pray that he wouldn't make a complete fool of himself, even though he already knew that those prayers would go unanswered.

-000-

Utterly annihilating your opponent feels good, really good. Few things can rival the feeling of basking in the afterglow of victory while you foe has no choice but to acknowledge your absolute superiority, and that they were fools for even thinking they could challenge you. Tom knew this well, one of his favorite pastimes was crushing people under his heel. Whether it be at ping pong or video games, he was the champion and he loved to remind others of this. But even he had his limits.

And right now, as Tom watched Marco get his cart stuck on a cow and place in dead last without crossing the finish line even once, said limits had been reached. There was no joy to be had in victory here, it just made him feel bad, like kicking a puppy. At least when they had their game of table tennis, Marco had been defiant to the end, even though it had been obvious from the outset that he had no way of winning. Right now though, the boy was displaying something between desperation and depressed acceptance.

"Do you, um, want to do something else?" Tom finally asked.

"Yes!" Marco said quickly. He then paused and gave a small cough, "I mean, if you really want to-"

"I do, I really do." Tom replied before Marco finished. He had come here to have fun, and right now neither of them were enjoying themselves, "So, you want to play a different game?"

"I'm, actually a little video gamed out." Marco said, as he let the control slide out of his hands, "How about... Ping pong?"

"I was kind of thinking we'd switch to something you wouldn't be horribly crushed at." Tom said.

"Hey, don't underestimate me. I've gotten a lot better." Marco said. It was true, unlike video games they actually had table tennis in Hekapoo's dimension, though it was a bit different there. The ball exploded if it you hit it back and forth too much, and the player in the lead had to hang upside down from the ceiling, "Oh, but I don't have a ping pong table, that might be a problem."

Tom snapped his fingers, and a massive pillar of flame appeared in the centre of the room. With a high pitched shriek, Marco toppled over backwards and tried to scoot away of the column of fire, which was growing larger in size. However, the fire gave off no heat and wasn't actually burning anything, and soon it disappeared revealing a ping pong table. Tom walked over to one side and picked up a paddle and ball. With as much dignity as he could manage, Marco stood up and moved to his end of the table.

"We can still do something else." Tom offered while Marco picked up his paddle, "Like, crochet or something."

"Is that what you think I do in my spare time?" Marco asked. The demon shrugged in reply and Marco gave him an unamused stare, "Just serve the ball."

"Oookay." Tom said skeptically.

He tossed the ball into the air and smacked it with his paddle as it fell back down. The ball flew forward, bounced off the other side of the table and Marco moved to intercept it. Normally, this would be the part where Tom gained a point and Marco lost a paddle, but instead Marco was able to hit the ball back. Tom didn't even move to try and hit as never in a million years did he expect the ball to actually come back his way. So, it wasn't until after it flew past him that his mind was able to process what happened.

Tom whirled around in disbelief and saw that, sure enough, the ball had indeed been sent back to him and was currently bouncing along the floor. Turning back to Marco with a look of pure shock on his face, Tom simply stared at the human for a moment.

"...How?" The demon began to ask, but didn't get beyond the first word.

"Like I said, I've gotten a lot better." Marco said with a smug grin. Tom gaze him a confused glare and picked up a new ball to serve.

As Tom served the next ball, he learned that the first time had not been, as he had hoped, a fluke. Fortunately, he wasn't caught off guard as Marco hit the ball back to him this time, and was able to intercept it. The two of them pinged the pong for a few minutes, until Tom hit the ball so that it bounced off the table and soared high over Marco's head, earning the demon a point. Now they were even again, and he could admit that Marco had truly gotten better, somehow good enough to keep up with the prince. Also, the human's newfound skill somehow kept his paddle from being shattered every time the ball hit it. Tom wasn't really sure how that worked, and decided it best not to think about.

After about an hour and a half, the two of them were still playing. Breathing heavily from their unusually intense game of ping pong, Tom glared at Marco as the boy hit the ball back to him. He looked fine, not panting or sweating like Tom was. The prince decided to blame his exhaustion on his earlier run in with the barrier. But it didn't matter that the demon was starting to feel exhausted while his opponent still looked completely fresh, Tom was only one point from winning the game. At some point, they had decided that the first person to reach five points would win, and right now Tom had four points while Marco was only at three. Tom hit the ball with all his might, and maybe just a small boost from his demonic powers, and the ball flew back towards Marco. The human teen dived to the side to try and smack it, but was just a fraction of a second too slow and the ball whizzed past him.

"Game, set, match!" Tom threw his arms up triumphantly and then fell backwards onto the floor, where he decided to lay for a while. Marco moved around the table and crouched next to Tom's prone and panting form.

"Good game." Marco said.

"Thanks." Tom responded, speaking between breaths, "You, too. I, have to, admit, you have, gotten, better."

"Thanks. I had a lot of fun today." Marco said, and moved to sit on his bed, "I hope the politics thing goes well, so that we can hang out more. Well, that and out of general concern for your well being."

"Um, yeah about that." Tom said, sitting up, "You remember how I said my parents are going to be meeting with a bunch of the demon lords?"

"Yeah, why?" Marco asked, slightly concerned.

"Well, I have to go with them when they do. It's going to be this big formal gathering." Tom paused for a moment, "And, I kind of need to bring... a date."

"Oh, goddammit Tom. You're just here to ask Star out!" Marco said, frustrated.

"No! Well, technically yes." Tom said, "Let me explain."

"Please do. Because it seems to me that you were just hanging out with me as an excuse so that you could try to date Star again." Marco said, glaring at the demon.

"No, no. It's the opposite actually. I was using the excuse of asking out Star so that I could hang out with you." Tom said. Marco gave him a perplexed stare and Tom continued, "Look, the only reason my parents let me out of the palace was so that I could ask Star to come with me to this event. But, I wanted to hang out with you a little first, so I didn't mention it until now. I'm not going to use you to try and get back together with Star, you're like the only friend I have."

"Oh." Marco said, far more calmly. He was glad that Tom wasn't just using him, but now he felt kind of guilty for accusing the demon in the first place. Though, considering most of his previous encounters with Tom, the accusation was entire justified, "I'm your only friend?"

"Y-yeah, kind of." Tom said awkwardly. Marco considered this information for a moment, he knew they were on friendly terms but he didn't realise that he was actually Tom's friend. In the end, he decided not to comment on it.

"Why do you need to bring Star as a date anyway?" Marco asked.

"Something about reminding the other demon lords that the Lucitors have powerful friends." Tom said with a shrug as he tried to remember what his parents had told him, "I don't really know. I haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to the situation. All I know, is that some of the Night Creatures got really unhappy and are trying to whip the rest of the underworld into a frenzy."

"Wait, Night Creatures?!" Marco practically shouted.

"Yeah, it sucks, but some of the demon lords are Night Creatures. Ya see, something happened a little over a month ago and they started acting up." Tom explained. He generally didn't care about politics, but even he noticed the fuss they were making. Scratching his head, Tom tried to remember what else he could about the situation, "Um, I think they were trying to get the other nobles of the underworld to side with them, but they've been pretty unsuccessful. So, me, my parents, and the rest of the normal demon lords are going to go meet with the Night Creatures and try to intimidate them into backing down. But it's going to be at this big fancy gathering for some reason."

Tom smiled, kind of proud of himself for being able to remember all that. However, Marco stared at the wall in horror. He recalled what Hekapoo had told him when they went to stop Blackmore, about how many of Dracula's old subordinates started following Graham Jones, believing him to be the next Dark Lord. By most of the multiverse's time flow, Marco had killed Graham roughly over a month ago, the same time that the Night Creatures in the underworld became upset. The timelines matched a bit too neatly, and Marco was willing to bet money that the situation in the underworld was tied to Graham's death, the Night Creature demon lords were probably among those who believe him to be the reincarnation of Dracula.

' _So, basically it's my fault that the underworld's in such a mess right now._ ' Marco thought ruefully. And now, Tom was going to have to meet a bunch of Night Creatures because of him. That was already something that would make Marco extremely worried, but to make things even worse, said Night Creatures also wanted to overthrow the Lucitor royal family. From his own experience with Night Creatures, if they wanted you dead they're definitely going to try to kill you.

There's no way in hell, no pun intended, that Marco was going to let Tom go to this meeting. Similarly, Marco wasn't planning on letting Star go either, but he wasn't as concerned about Star, since she would probably refuse to go with Tom anyway. Keeping Tom away from the Night Creatures was going to be a lot harder though. Marco's first thought was to kidnap the prince, but he realised pretty much immediately how that was a bad idea. Abducting the crown prince of the underworld was probably a good way to become a wanted criminal, and to get executed if he was ever caught. His next idea was for Tom to 'accidentally' sustain some kind of injury that would prevent him from going, and Marco realised that he had very disturbing mind, but considering that he'd seen Tom reattach his severed hand before, that plan might be difficult. Also, even considering the idea of hurting one of his friends, no matter what the reason, made Marco felt like absolute scum.

If he couldn't stop Tom from going, then he would have to go with him. That way at least he could help keep him safe from whatever might happen. But how would he able to tag along? Suddenly, a plan started to form in Marco's mind, and he began mapping out what he was going to do. First, he just needed Star to turn down Tom's invitation.

-000-

"No." Star said bluntly.

"Couldn't you have at least pretended to consider saying yes?" Tom asked with a small wince. While he had expected Star to turn him down, it was still a little painful just how quickly she had refused. He hadn't even finished asking her before she said no.

"No." Star repeated without any hesitation.

"T-that's fine. I mean, I was only asking cause my parents wanted me too." Tom said with a nervous chuckle. He was obviously trying to play off her rejection as no big deal, but was doing a pretty bad job.

Rather than responding to that, Star instead zapped a tennis ball with her wand. It started glowing and began floating through the air. Star set her wand down and picked up her whip. As the ball flew about, she swung the whip at it. The whip stuck it, and the ball burst open, falling to the ground alongside several of its destroyed brethren that littered the backyard.

By now, Sofía had left, her lessons with Star having come to an end for the day. But that didn't mean that Star was finished practicing, especially not since she found a way to train that was far more fun than all those stuffy lessons about stance and arm movement. She floated another tennis ball into the air, and tried to hit it again. Unfortunately, she missed her target and instead wound up snapping a cactus in half with her whip.

"Dang it." Star said, cursing either breaking the cactus or missing the ball, she wasn't sure which.

"Uh, I'm gonna head back inside." Tom said, walking slowly backwards from Star.

"Okay, bye." Star said absentmindedly, eyes fixed on the tennis ball. It was floating there in the air, mocking her.

Tom headed back towards the house, picking up the pace slightly when he heard the whip crack behind him. He was going to have dreams about a whip wielding Star, he just knew it. Entering the back door, Tom soon found Marco in the kitchen, eating an apple. The demon took a seat at the table and gave a sigh.

"Well, she said no." Tom said.

"You knew she was going to." Marco stated, before taking another bite of the apple.

"Yeah, of course I did. It's no biggie." Tom once again tried to play it off.

"Then why do you look like a heart broken bar patron ready to drown his sorrows?" Marco asked.

"I do not!" Tom said angrily as he jumped up from his seat. Marco rolled his eyes, but decided to shift the topic of conversation.

"Still, sorry that Star wouldn't go. This demon gathering seems pretty important." Marco said, steering the conversation to where he needed it to go.

"Oh, I could care less about that." Tom scoffed.

"It's still important, you're obviously not worried but I kind of am. If this doesn't go well, it sounds like you could have a revolution on your hands." Marco pointed out, "And those don't usually end well for the crown family."

"I doubt Star going would make much of a difference." Tom said.

"Every little thing helps." Marco responded.

"If you're so concerned why don't you try and convince her to go?" Tom asked.

"I'm not going to try to make Star do something she doesn't want to." Marco said, "But, I can think of another well known princess who could go with you. She's not as influential as Star, but it would be better than nothing."

"Really, who?" Tom asked.

"Princess Marco," He gave an annoyed sigh, "Turdina."

"Wait, you know Princess Turdina?!" Tom asked, his voice colored by surprise. Marco just gave him confused glare for a second.

"...I _am_ Princess Turdina!" Marco yelled, waving his arms around to gesture at himself, "How, the frick did you not know that!? I have the same name, the same voice. The same **face**!"

"Uhh..." Tom stared open mouthed at Marco for what felt like an hour trying to think of something to say, "In fairness, I've never heard Princess Turdina talk before."

"Uh huh, what's you excuse for the rest?" Marco folded his arms and gave the demon and unamused look.

"...Make up?" Tom suggested weakly. Princess Marco narrowed his eyes at that, "Look, today's already been a blow to my self esteem at multiple points, could you please stop making me feel like an idiot?"

"Fine, I mean it's not like you're the only person to be fooled by my princess disguise." Marco said. Though none of the other people to be fooled by it knew Marco personally.

"So wait, you want to go with me to this demon lord gathering?" Tom asked.

"I figure it will help ensure you don't get overthrown, so yeah." Marco replied, "When is it by the way?"

"The Gathering? It's tomorrow." Tom answered, "If you're going to come, I'd have to pick you at around six."

"Cool, I'll be ready and all princessy by then." Marco said.

"Um, okay, see you latter then." Tom said, still a little confused by what happened.

After saying their goodbyes, Tom left the house and got into his carriage, which promptly disappeared in a column of fire. Once the demon had left, Marco took his dimensional scissors and cut open a portal to Quest Buy. If he was going to go to an event with a bunch of Night Creatures, he needed to be prepared.

-000-

Pazuzu watched his minions mill about making preparations. At current, he was standing in the entrance hall of his tower, it was a grand room. Starting from the massive front doors, a red carpet ran down the length of the room, flanked by scours of dark pillars that supported the high arched ceiling. Eventually, the carpet led up to an imperial staircase, from atop which Pazuzu stood. The hall had been designed to imitate to the entrance hall of Dracula's own Castle, or at least one of its incarnations.

While he watched, a massive demon materialised in the air in front of him. Its skin was a dark purple, with blood red horns that drooped down to its knees, and had massive hands the size of its torso. Pazuzu recognised it as one of his fellow demon lords, albeit a less important one, and a Night Creature like himself.

"The preparations are nearing completion." It spoke in a voice like thunder, with words that shook the air so that they could be felt as well as heard.

"Excellent." Pazuzu said, "And what of the other demon nobles? They're stance remains unchanged?"

"Yes. They have agreed to not interfere, but they will not grant us any aid. They do not wish to be associated with us should our coup fail." The Demon Lord said.

"All that matters it that they do not side with the Lucitors. We have no need of their aid, our strength alone shall be more than enough to crush the royal family." Pazuzu gave a cruel chuckle, "To think the Lucitors thought that they had the support of hell."

"Our forces have all but finished assembling, however there is still one missing-" The Demon Lord was interrupted by the front doors opening with a loud clank.

Once the doors had opened fully, a blue demon entered into the hall. He was almost human looking, but his skin and hair were blue and he possessed two insect-like legs as well as two extra insect arms just below his human ones, though even those ended in insect claws. Complimenting his blue skin and hair, was the fancy blue jacket he wore. It had an upturned, red collar, the only splash of a different color on his entire body, and the suit seemed to turn into a wings at the bottom, calling into question if it was clothing or part of his body. In one claw the demon held a fancy cane that was -to the shock of nobody- blue, though with a gold tip and handle.

"Ah, never mind, he has just arrived." The Demon Lord said, and promptly disappeared.

The new arrival hopped down the hall, a manner of locomotion that Pazuzu found to be incredibly undignified. Once the demon had finished jumping across the carpet the hall, he reached the base of the staircase and simply leaped to the top in a single bound. Now next to Pazuzu, the blue demon was far smaller than he was, standing a mere seven feet in height.

"Lord Abaddon." Pazuzu said politely, with a slight bow of his head.

"Hello Pazuzu." Abaddon replied. Pazuzu was slightly annoyed by the lack of respect that Abaddon displayed, but he let it slide. Pazuzu needed Abaddon, he was the master of pestilent locusts and one of, if not the most powerful being in hell.

"I would once again like to thank you for joining me." Pazuzu said.

"Of course, I want to see the underworld return to its glory days as much as anyone else." Abaddon said.

"Do not call it that." Pazuzu forced his voice to stay calm, it would not do to yell at quite possibly the strongest demon in the universe, "Our dominion is hell, we should call it such."

"You do realise it was also referred to as the underworld even before the Lucitors changed its official name?" Abaddon asked, resting nonchalantly on his cane. Pazuzu growled under his breath, but otherwise said nothing. The locust master continued speaking once he realised that he wasn't getting a response, "Tell me, what's the plan?"

"Once the Lucitors have arrived, we kill them." Pazuzu replied.

"That's... a very simple plan." Abaddon said, looking up and scratching his chin.

"The best plans are. Overly complicated strategies can go awry too easily." Pazuzu said, "Besides, most of my plan has already come to completion. The Lucitors believe they will have allies waiting here when they come, but in reality they will be alone. I have convinced to other demon lords to not act, and the ones who would not listen to me have been eliminated."

"Still, you should have a back up." Abaddon responded, "What would happen if one of the noble houses has a change of heart and decides to come to the royal family's aid, or if the Lucitors learned of your treachery and arrive with their army in tow? Do you have a plan should that happen?"

"Neither of those things shall occur." Pazuzu said simply.

"Yes, of course. But what if they do? These are things you must account for Pazuzu. I don't suppose you have any potential back up?" Abaddon said, looking at Pazuzu sideways, "Like say, from a powerful vampire?"

"How did?" Pazuzu did not finish his sentence, instead taking a step backwards from the locust master.

"A little bird told me." Adaddon said, "Tell me, why have you refused Olrox's allegiance?"

"...That vampire is nothing but trouble." Pazuzu growled, "We do not need him."

"Are you afraid of him?" Abaddon asked, though he made it clear it wasn't actually a question.

"This conversation is over." Pazuzu said firmly, "Once the Lucitors are dead, we will rule hell, and neither Olrox nor anyone else will have anything to offer us. There is no need to become indebted to him now."

With that, Pazuzu turned around and walked further into the tower, leaving Abaddon behind. The blue demon watched him leave but made no move to follow, instead he turned around and began watching the lesser demons mill about and make preparations. At the moment, one of them was trying to shove a sack of money into a candelabra mounted on a pillar.

-000-

By the time Tom arrived to get Marco, he was in full princess mode, clad in his signature purple dress. With Star's help, he had magically lengthened his hair so that it could be done in a ponytail. Marco had actually been a little worried about telling Star that he was going to the demon lord gathering, but he needed her help to put on his disguise. Fortunately though, Star didn't even bat an eye when he told her he was going, she didn't even tease him about the fact that he was essentially going on a date with Tom, for which he was incredibly grateful.

Tom showed up in a white tuxedo, the same one he had worn to the Blood Moon Ball, and Marco wondered if it was the only piece of formal wear the demon owned. In the place of his usual vehicle, Tom had arrived in a massive carriage drawn by two zombie dragons. Off to the side, a police officer eyed the carriage, trying to recall if it was violating any traffic laws. Once inside, Marco learned the reason why the carriage was so large, it was because one of its passengers was very large.

Wrathmelior Lucitor, queen of the underworld and Tom's mother, actually looked a lot like her son once you got past the fact that she was about five times his size. She had the same pink hair, three eyes, and similar horns. What Tom didn't get from his mom, he got from his father. Dave Lucitor, was bizarrely enough, a mewman, but apart from that basically looked like an older Tom.

"I didn't know that you knew Princess Marco." Dave said to his son. By now the carriage had returned to the underworld and was rolling along towards its destination.

"I just met hi- _her_ recently." Tom awkwardly explained. Technically it wasn't a lie, or perhaps the it was a lie, but only by technicality, one of the two, "She's a friend of Star's."

"I must say, we were surprised when we heard that our son was bringing the multiverse famous Princess Marco as a date." Dave said, turning to address Marco.

"I wouldn't call myself multiverse famous, Mr. Lucitor." The boy princess said with a small, stiff laugh. Then he remembered that Tom's father was a king and quickly added, "Your majesty."

"Oh please, you don't need to be formal. Call me Dave." The king said, with a warm smile.

"I couldn't possibly-" Marco began but was promptly interrupted.

"I said, _call me Dave_." The crown patriarch of the abyss said threateningly, his beaming face replaced by an angry glare faster than most would think physically possible. It became immediately clear where Tom got his temper from.

"O-okay... Dave." Marco said nervously. Just a quickly as before, Dave's expression changed back to a smile, while Tom palmed his face in embarrassment.

"You shouldn't sell yourself short. Everyone knows who Princess Marco Turdina is." Dave said, "With all your merchandise, it would be impossible to. You have action figures, posters, T-shirts, body pillows-"

"I'm sorry did you say body pillows?" Marco asked. Meanwhile, Tom's face turned brightest possible shade of red and he felt a sudden urge to commit patricide for most certainly unrelated reasons.

"Cereals, comic books, and even a popsicle of admittedly dubious quality." Dave continued.

"Wow, I never really thought about just how many people bought stuff with my name on it before." Marco said. He wondered if the 650 dollars he received in royalties each month was significantly less money than he probably ought to be getting. No, the rest of the money went to keeping Saint Olga's afloat, and they probably needed it ever since Marco had driven off the only people there capable of managing a budget.

A loud demonic screech came from the front outside the carriage. Marco looked up in fear, worried for a moment that they were under attack by the Night Creatures.

"Oh, looks like we're almost here." Dave said, having understood the screech. His face fell into a scowl, "Alright, let's get this over with."

Marco turned to look out the window. At current, they were passing through an enormous gate. It was made of glistening black metal, and a symbol of a black dragon was set on each door. In front of the carriage, just a short distance off, was a massive tower.

* * *

 **I wanted to finish this chapter before Season 4 came out, and I finished writing it the day before the first episode aired. I was all ready to pat myself on the back, but then I remembered that I still had to edit it, a process that I usually spend a minimum of 3 days on. I am also happy and somewhat amused that Season 4 confirmed that they have towers in the Underworld.**

 **This chapter was a bitch to write, I'm not sure I'm happy with the finished product. And I can safely say I'm terrible at estimating how long a chapter is going to be before I start writing. I was expecting this one to be a good 2,000 words shorter than it wound up being.**

 **I know I said I wasn't going to be using any of the plot from _Dawn of Sorrow,_ but I actually really like the boss fight against Abaddon, so I decided to include him. My stance on the rest of the game's story hasn't changed though.**

 **If you're wondering how Star levitated the tennis ball since she couldn't levitate the apple in _Baby,_ I'll point out that she'd been shown to levitate other things. In fact, she actually levitates a tennis ball in the show, making me really wonder why she had so much trouble with that apple.**

 **Also, this fic is now longer than _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ , one of my favorite books of all time. Now if only word count had some correlation to quality.**


	8. Chapter 8: Order of the Demon

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or** **Castlevania.**

* * *

The carriage came to a stop in front of the tower. Its door swung open, and four passengers climbed out. As Marco exited the carriage, holding his poofy dress so that he could probably climb down, his eyes darted about, taking in the surrounding area. They appeared to be in a parking lot of some sort, which honestly wasn't what Marco had been expecting. All around them were carriages of various shapes and sizes, with the Lucitor's carriage was parked closest to the front of the tower.

"Did everyone get here before us?" Marco asked, looking at all the other carriages. He assumed they belonged to the other demon lords.

"No, there are still some demon lords who haven't arrived yet. Orcus isn't here, you'd see his ridiculous carriage immediately if he was." Dave said. Looking at the parking lot, he raised an eyebrow, surprised by the number of memorable vehicles he didn't see, "Actually, looks like there are a lot of demon lords that haven't shown up yet."

His musings were interrupted when several demons leapt off the roof the carriage. Marco jumped back, startled by their sudden appearance. There were over a dozen of them, all clad in armour and holding weapons. Marco could tell from the way carried themselves that they were skilled combatants. However, instead of attacking them like he expected, the demons instead bowed to the queen and king.

"Those are the royal guards." Tom leaned close to Marco and whispered, having noticed the human princess' confusion.

"Why were they on the roof?" Marco asked, just as quietly.

"To watch out for trouble." Tom explained, "Also, they wouldn't fit in the carriage, mom takes up to much room."

The guards stood up straight, and formed a defensive circle around the Lucitors and Marco. Once the circle was complete, the group started moving towards the tower. It was a massive tower, so large that even when Marco craned his head he could not see the top. The thing seemed to be made entirely of black stone, and had inordinate amount of statues on it. The whole tower was covered with gargoyles, statues, and carvings. It looked as those someone tried to stick an entire museum on the outside walls of a building. Marco found the result hard to look at, and he would like to have strong words with whoever designed the over cluttered mess.

They moved closer to the tower, crossing a bridge over a moat of lava into a courtyard, and Marco noticed yet another statue in the middle of the courtyard. Normally he would feel disgusted at the clear overuse of sculptures, but when he got closer he felt an old fear resurface. The statue was of a terrified man, lying on his back with his arms outstretch in front of him. Standing over the man, was a massive cloaked figure. It was raising a scythe into the air with the intent of bringing it down on the prone human. As Marco walked past the statue, he came to an angle where he could see underneath the cloaked figure's hood. A skull stared down at him from beneath the hood. For a breath moment, the statue changed. The grey stone robes changed to purple, and small blue flames shone from within the skull's black eye sockets, staring at him. Marco froze, and quickly looked away. His heart hammered against his chest, and adrenaline flooded his body. His breathing was short and fast, like he was in the middle of running a marathon. Something touched his shoulder, and Marco summoned the power of his Plasma Blast soul, so as to vaporise whatever was attacking him.

Except nothing was attacking him. When spun around, ready to strike, Marco saw only a slightly concerned Tom.

"Hey, are you okay?" Tom asked.

"Y-yeah." Marco slowed his breathing, and dismissed the bullet soul back to depths of his own spirit, "It's just, this tower is so _hideous_. It looks like someone was given a catalog of possible tower designs and just picked all of them."

"I'd have to agree. I mean, how many gargoyles does one tower need?" Tom said with a smirk. Marco returned the smile, and the two continued across the courtyard.

As they moved towards the entrance of the tower, Marco glanced over his shoulder. The statue was back to normal, made of normal grey stone. He immediately averted his eyes, and turned back around.

-000-

The front doors of the tower thudded open. Floating slightly above the staircase, the Demon Lord -who had a name for the record, not that anyone bothered to remember it- watched as the royal family and their guards entered into the hall. Some demon maids still in the entrance hall bowed to them and offered greetings. Once the procession had crossed most of the room, the Demon Lord addressed them.

"My King and Queen." It said with a bow, its voice booming throughout the hall, "We are grateful for your arrival. Please, the rest of the demon lords are waiting above. I shall show you to them."

"Thanks, um... You." The king of the underworld said. The Demon Lord rolled its eyes, not that anyone could tell since said eyes were a solid color. The fact that they didn't know its name was hardly surprising.

' _Just another reason to be glad they'll die soon._ ' The Demon Lord thought.

"Come this way." It said. The Demon Lord turned around and floated down the hallway at the top of the stairs.

The group moved further into the tower, until eventually, after several twists and turns, they reached a large elevator. Perhaps calling it an elevator was overly generous, as it was a just giant metal cage that was raised by chains. Fortunately, the cage was large enough for everyone to fit inside, even if Wrathmelior had to bend down.

With a sudden jerk and a loud creak that did nothing to inspire confidence, the cage started slowly moving up. While the elevator ascended, the Demon Lord examined the royals. They had brought the exact number of guards the Night Creatures had expected. The Lucitor's royal guards were all well trained and strong combatants, but they would be easily overpowered by Pazuzu's forces. The queen and prince might cause them some small amount of trouble, but nothing that the Night Creatures couldn't handle. Dave, the mewman who Wrathmelior had chosen to be her king was of no concern, he was not a warrior and would probably be among the first to die.

That left only one unknown, the mewman girl that the prince had brought along as a date. No, not mewman, a human, the Demon Lord realised. A lowly, pathetic human! The Demon Lord fought the urge to laugh. The fact that the rulers of hell were consorting with humans was hilariously sad, and truly showed just how badly they needed to be removed. Still, the human princess looked a familiar, but the Demon Lord found it hard to remember why. It felt like it had seen her at Quest Buy.

Marco kept nervously glancing at the Demon Lord. He had never been around a Night Creature this long without trying to kill it before. Also, it looked almost identical to some of the demons he had killed in the Castle, which wasn't helping his nerves.

Eventually, the cage jerked to a stop and opened. The group exited it into a long hallway. Following the Demon Lord again, they traveled down the hall. Paintings depicting horrific scenes of torture and slaughter in gruesome detail lined walls. Before too much longer, they arrived at a large set of blood red double doors with a skull and crossbones on them. To Marco, this seemed to very blatantly say "Bad News", but this was the underworld. Skulls, lava, and torture devices seemed to be common decor down here.

The skull doors swung open. Beyond them was a utterly massive circular room, with polished marble floors and a ceiling high enough that Wrathmelior could stretch her arms and fail to reach the ceiling. Four statues of the Virgin Mary stood against opposite ends of the walls, above each statue was a curtain covered balcony with an additional fifth, larger balcony on the opposite side of the room from the door.

"Where is everyone?" Tom asked, looking at the empty room. He assumed this was their destination, since it looked like the kind of room you would hold a fancy gathering. Additionally, the room was a dead end, with the red skull door being the only entrance and exit.

Said doors slammed close behind them, and the click of a lock could be heard coming from them. While this happened, the Demon Lord dematerialized. Immediately, Marco realised what was happening, they just fell into a trap. The royal guards realised it as well, drawing their weapons and standing more defensively around the Lucitors.

The curtains of the fifth, largest balcony drew back, revealing Pazuzu. He stood tall, with his arms folded in front of himself confidently.

"Pazuzu! What's going on here!?" Dave shouted angrily, "Where are the other demon lords!?"

"At home, I would imagine." Pazuzu said smugly.

Wrathmelior angrily made a serious of trilling noises that were understood by everyone in the room except Marco.

"Don't you see? They've abandoned you." Pazuzu replied. The curtains on the other balconies opened, revealing more Night Creatures. They stared down at the royal family with bloodlust shining in their eyes.

"This is treason!" Dave yelled.

"Of course it is! Did you honestly believe hell would put up with you for much longer?" Pazuzu asked, "You have made a mockery of this realm. We are demons. We live for Chaos and thirst for destruction. None of this bullshit of working with mewmans and fostering peace. We once slaughtered mewmans by the thousands. No more shall you rule over us, we will return hell to its former glory. Like when Dracula Himself still lived!"

The Night Creatures jumped from balconies, and charged the Lucitors and their guards. The royal guards tried to fight them off, but they were outnumbered. A Lubicant flew over the guards and dived at Tom with its trident, the demon prince's back was turned to the Night Creature. But before it could impale him, Marco leaped at it and tackled the fiend out of the air. They hit the ground together, with Marco landing on top of the Lubicant, making sure to drive his foot into its chest in the process. He grabbed ahold of its trident with one hand, and delivered a powerful punch to its face with the aid of the Werejaguar's soul. The Night Creature's grip on the weapon loosened, and Marco wrenched it from the monster's hands. Spinning it around, he plunged the trident into the Lubicant. With a roar of pain, the fiend slashed at Marco with a clawed hand, and he jumped away, pulling the trident from its body as he did so. Its attempts to rise to its feet were cut short by Marco stabbing it again, this time through its head. The Lubicant thrashed around for a moment, before finally dying.

One of the Lucitor's royal guards was cut down by a Curly. The four-armed demon charged Marco. With tremendous speed and precision, it swung its four blades at the human boy. He ducked under the first slash, and managed to blocked the second with the trident, but two more swords shot towards him. Before they could slice into him, a torrent of flames blasted the Curly, roasting it to a crisp.

"Hands off my friend!" Tom yelled, his eyes glowing and his hands aflame.

Wrathmelior stomped forwards, stepping over her guards towards and on some Night Creatures they were fighting. Another Lubicant flew towards her, which she backhanded out of the air. Roaring loudly, she threw her arms out and a massive wall of hellfire filled the room, surrounding her family and guards. Several Night Creatures were incinerated by the flames, while the rest nearly trampled each other to escape them.

With a grunt of annoyance, Pazuzu leapt from his balcony. Hitting the ground with a crash that shook the room, the Night Creature charged at the wall of fire. He jumped through it, barely even feeling the flames, and upon reaching the other side, punched the queen of the underworld in the face. She flew across the room, slamming into the wall as the ring of fire dissipated. Pazuzu stomped menacingly towards her.

"Wrathmelior!" Dave shouted. He started running towards his wife, but had to dodge back as a huge battle axe slammed down onto the ground in front of him. A large red minotaur blocked his path.

He shot a glare at the monster that actually made it flinch slightly. Then, with a scream that put the roar of every demon in the room to shame, he body-slammed the minotaur. Dave hit it straight in the gut, causing the beast to double over. When it did, he grabbed onto its horns and slammed its head into the ground repeatedly, breaking the marble floor. While he may not be a warrior, Dave Lucitor is no pushover. The man could easily hold his own in a fight with River Butterfly, who hunted monsters out of boredom. Also, look at his wife. The fact that Dave had a child with her and was still alive served as proof of his physically toughness.

Marco impaled another Night Creature with his new trident. By now, several Night Creatures lay dead around him. He spun around and swung the trident like a lacrosse stick, hurling the corpse impaled on it at an advancing Curly. With lightning fast slashes, it cut the body out of the air before it could hit the four-armed demon. In doing so however, it left itself open and Marco darted forward and stabbed it through the neck. Quickly, he yanked the trident back, smashing a skeleton knight that tried to attack him from behind with the butt end of his pole. Its bones shattered from the strike, and the skeleton collapsed.

Nearby, Tom roasted enemies with blasts of fire. He heard someone behind him and spun around. Instead of a horrific Night Creature, he saw a young human looking maid and hesitated in blasting her. His hesitation cost him, as the maid jumped forward and kicked him in the face. Another kick followed instantly after, and Tom flew backwards. He hit the ground and skidded forward a few more yards before coming to a stop. The maid ran at him, but before she could reach him, Marco jump in between them and thrusted his trident at her. Dodging around the three pronged spear, she kicked at him. Marco dashed backwards to avoid the kick, and the raised his trident to block another one. He swung the pole of the trident at the maid, and she ducked underneath it. Marco responded with a kick of his own, which was a little hard to do because of the dress, catching her off guard and hitting her in the chin. While she was staggered, he brought the tip of his trident back around and stabbed her in chest.

Finally allowed a moment's respite, Marco surveyed the battlefield. Most of the guards the Lucitors brought were dead, while the Night Creatures just kept coming. As for the Lucitors themselves... Well, at least Dave was doing well. At current he was holding a Curly by the leg and using it to beat a Lubicant to death. But Wrathmelior was grappling with Pazuzu, and despite being larger than him, seemed to be fighting a losing battle. Unfortunately, there wasn't much that Marco could do against him armed with only a trident. Instead he went to help Tom, who managed to become surrounded by skeletal warriors in the time it took Marco kill the Persephone maid.

For every skeleton that Tom blasted, two more seemed to take its place. So, despite his best efforts to keep the undead at a distance from him, they got closer by the second. Then a massive burst of blue flame cleared out a large portion of the skeletons. Marco ran up to Tom carrying his trident in one hand and a bottle of Holy Water in the other. Once he reached the prince, he spun around, dowsing the Holy Water around them, making sure not to hit Tom, the holy flames it produced pushing the undead back. Marco was very glad he picked some up at Quest Buy.

"You brought Holy Water?" Tom asked, not quite sure what to think of that.

"Yes, your welcome." Marco replied, swinging his pole arm at a skeleton that came within its range.

"Ugh, where are they all coming from!?" Tom growled, as he shot fire at more skeletons. Marco had an idea of their origins, and scanned the room while fending off the skeletons.

"There!" Marco said, pointing at a large owl-like demon with a gold crown still atop one of the balconies, "That Stolas is summoning them."

As if to prove him right, the Stolas twisted its head around and a column of light appeared in front it, and upon fading revealed more skeletons warriors.

"Got it, so we need take it out." Tom said, "I can clear a path, but it'll take a little time. You need to make sure nothing attacks me while I'm getting set up."

"Okay, I've gotcha." Marco said, smacking more skeletons away.

"I'm serious, if you let me get stabbed in the butt while-" The prince started.

"Tom!" Marco shouted, while blocking three swords simultaneously, "Just do the thing!"

Tom took a deep breath, closed his eyes and floated into the air. When he opened his eyes they were glowing, and he began speaking in a demonic chant. The skeletons moved to attack him, but Marco spun around while swinging his weapon, clearing a wide circle around him and Tom. Once the prince finished reciting the incantation, a massive burst of fire spread out from him, turning the undead to ash while leaving Marco unharmed.

With the skeletons gone, the duo started running towards the Stolas. Halfway there, a red minotaur jumped in their path and swung its axe at them. Rushing forward, Marco caught the blade of the axe between the prongs of his trident. He twisted the the trident, bring the axe head to ground and pining it there. The minotaur tried to yank its axe free, but Marco kept it pinned.

"Tom! Go kill the Stolas!" Marco shouted, noticing the owl demon summoning more skeletons, "I'll handle this thing!"

Tom looked apprehensive for moment, before nodding and running past them. Giving up on trying to free its axe, the minotaur's fist glowed green and the beast charged him. Just in time, Marco dashed away as it uppercutted the air where he had been. With a roar, the Night Creature picked up its axe and ran at him. Marco charged the minotaur with his trident at ready.

-000-

The Diaz's kitchen was in complete disarray. The cupboards were broken and they're contents spilled about the floor. The sink was on fire, while the oven was waterlogged. Several blasts marks lined the walls. In general, it looked like the site of some fierce battle. That's because it was. Star stood on top of the island in the middle of the kitchen with her wand in front of her. A bizarre creature that looked like a pizza with spider legs crawled out from under the refrigerator.

"Rainbow Fist Punch!" Star shouted, firing a magic fist to try and squash it.

The pizza spider jumped over the rainbow, and latched onto Star's face. Flailing wildly in a panic, she toppled off the island onto to the ground. Star grabbed the pizza and tried to pry it off her face, screaming loudly all the while. Eventually, she managed to wedge her foot between the pizza and her face, and kicked it off. It sailed through the window with a crash and landed in the yard, before scuttling off into the neighborhood to wreak havoc elsewhere.

"Okay, so phazon does _not_ make for a good pizza topping." Star said, picking herself off the ground, "I'm gonna have to remember that."

She looked at the mess the kitchen was in and cringed. And her cooking experiments had been going so well too. A quick spell put out the flaming sink, but the rest would take a bit longer to fix. Eventually, she got the kitchen to a state where it didn't look completely destroyed anymore. But, Star decided to be with cooking for the night, besides the oven wasn't working anymore anyway, so it's not like she could cook much more even if she wanted to.

She went upstairs, and after thoroughly washing her face, headed to her room. Star flopped down onto her bed and tried to think of something to do in order to stave off her fast approaching boredom. She very nearly got up to ask Marco if he wanted to do anything before remembering that her bestie wasn't home at the moment. Part of her wondered how his 'not date' with Tom was going.

Why wonder? She could check how it was going. Lifting her wand up, Star thought of the _watching_ spell, not spying, watching spell. It was a spell she was actually really good at, probably because she used it a lot, not for spying of course. No, Star only used it for mundane, non-invasive tasks, like finding the remote when it got lost. Also what she was doing right now wasn't spying, it was just watching Marco, albeit without his knowledge or consent. Okay, it was totally spying, but wasn't that big of a deal. All she wanted to do was check in on him real quick and make sure everything was going smoothly.

Purple and yellow smoke appeared from her wand, creating a small eye hovering over it. The smoke cleared until it was just a ring, with the inside showing Marco. Instead of showing him simply standing around awkwardly at a big fancy gathering like Star expected, she saw her friend fighting an angry minotaur. The boy was wielding a trident, and had bloodstains all over his dress. Stabbing his weapon the ground, Marco swung around on it, kicking the minotaur in the chest. In the distance, she could see Tom floating in the air while fighting a giant owl chicken thing. Star let out a surprised gasp, she wasn't quite sure what the heck was going on, but it was clear that her best friend was in trouble.

The spell ended, and Star bolted to her mirror. She needed to go help him, but she didn't have any way of getting there since Marco took his scissors with him. Fortunately, she knew someone else who had a pair.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, call Sofía." Star said, glad that she made sure to get her teacher's contact info. The call connected, and Sofía's face appeared. The huntress was in a dark room, with only the light from her mirror illuminating her face.

"Star?" Sofía said groggily, squinting her eyes, "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"It's only eight." Star responded quickly.

"Not where I am." Sofía said with yawn.

"We don't have time for sleeping." Star said, "Marco is in trouble! He's in the underworld with Tom, the demon from yesterday, and they're both being attacked by monsters."

"The underworld? You mean he's in hell?" Sofía said, waking up suddenly, "I'll be right over."

With that, the call ended. Scarcely five seconds later, a portal opened, and Sofía came through it. Holding the Alucard Spear in her teeth, she tugged her fur long coat on. Underneath the hunter was wearing black pajamas with white polka dots. Star grabbed the scissors from Sofía's hand, and went to cut open a portal to Marco.

"Wait." Sofía said, grabbing Star's arm, "If we're going on a rescue mission to hell, you need to be prepared. You should know how to use the Morning Star Whip."

"Wait, you're going to teach me it now!?" Star asked, shocked.

"I would have liked for both you to be better trained and for a safer environment to first cast it in, but desperate times and all that." Sofía said, "To cast the Morning Star, swing your wand like a whip while saying the spell's name."

"That's it?" Star asked, "I kind of expected it to be a bit more complicated."

"Nope, that's it." Sofía said.

"Huh, okay." Star said, then cut open a portal to the room she saw Marco in.

Together they jumped through the portal, but instead of winding up in the large room with marble floors and several corpses, they found themselves outside, near a pool of lava. Not too far away was a colossal tower.

"What the? This isn't where I wanted to go!" Star said, frustrated.

"They probably have a Tramorfidian Crystal or something similar keeping us out." Sofía said.

"Intruders!" A deep, booming voice said. The duo turned around to see two large Devils flying towards them. They were mostly a cyan color, with small horns and huge hands, "Kill them!"

In response, Sofía charged one of them, moving so fast she disappeared from sight. In less than half a second, the blade of the Alucard Spear stabbed into the Devil, its flesh glowed hot and melted where the holy spear touched. The hunter pulled it free, and the Devil fell to the ground dead.

"Morning Star Whip!" As she spoke, Star pulled her wand back, then threw it forward. A long metal chain sprouted from the bell of her wand, attached to the end of it was a mace in the shape of a five pointed star. The star-shaped mace, from which the spell got its name, hit the Devil and pierced straight through its body. Holy energy collected inside the Night Creature, until its body began to expand horrifically. When the build up of holy magic became too great, the Devil exploded violently. The force of the explosion almost knocked Star off her feet, despite being a good fifteen yards away from it.

"Whoa." Star said in genuine awe, "That was..."

"See why I didn't want you to use it until you knew how to properly use a whip?" Sofía asked.

"Yeah." Star responded, looking down at her wand, which still had the chain coming from it, "Hey, um, how long does the whip stick around?"

"Until you dismiss it." Sofía said, "But you should probably keep it. You're gonna need the Morning Star here."

"Right. Let's go!" Star said. The two of them took off towards the tower.

-000-

Flying with his demon powers, Tom fired blast after blast of flames at the Stolas. With one final surge of fire from his hands, he finally turned the owl demon into a Kentucky fried corpse. For an elderly owl monster, the thing took a surprisingly long time to die. Finally though, it was dead, and now hopefully there would be fewer skeletons to fight.

"It's dead! Hey Marco! I killed the Solas thing!" Tom yelled, turning around. He was greeted by the sight of Marco standing atop a pile of corpses.

"Good job!" Marco called back, giving a thumbs-up, then promptly impaled a Lilith that tried to attack him.

Suddenly, the Demon Lord appeared in the air next to Tom.

"This has been going on long enough." It said. A massive hand grabbed Tom, and threw him at the wall. With a deafening crash, Tom smashed through the first wall and hit the another one on the other side hard enough to crack it, before falling to the floor. The Demon Lord floated through the hole it just created, pursuing the prince.

"Tom!" Marco yelled, dashing towards the wall. When he reached it, he jumped forty feet into the air in order to get to the hole. Landing in the room on the other side, he saw Tom struggling to stand up. Before he could, the Demon Lord backhanded him, and Tom flew across the hallway, crashing through another column.

The Demon Lord began laughing. It was a horrible sound, like the crashing of large waves against the rocks. Marco ran past the Night Creature to Tom, and it let him. Quickly, he checked to see if Tom was okay. Fortunately, the prince was only unconscious. Marco pulled out a potion from Quest Buy, but hesitated just as he was about to raise it to Tom's lips.

"Trying to save your boyfriend?" The Demon Lord mockingly asked, "What do you think you can accomplish, little human?"

Marco turned around and glared at it. It was a glare that promised death and worse. However, the Demon Lord gave another smug laugh in reply.

"That's adorable. Very well then, you can die together!" A large magical circle appeared in front of the Night Creature. Chaotic magic welled inside it, and a sphere of destruction starting forming.

But it was interrupted, as a massive blue sword of holy light stabbed through the magical circle, dispelling it, and into the Demon Lord. The Demon Lord let out a noise of surprise, and stared at the blade impaled in its body in shock. Its eyes followed the sword to its wielder, a large ghostly blue apparition of a woman, her lower body disappearing into faint blue wisps. She slashed the sword upwards, slicing through the Demon Lord's body and head, before fading away. The Demon Lord fell to the ground dead, and its soul was claimed by Marco.

The teenager let out a sigh of relief. He then turned back to Tom in order to him the potion. Now that the immediate threat was gone, he didn't need to use his souls anymore, and Tom didn't need to remain unconscious.

Marco froze, he could feel an incredibly powerful presence approaching, far stronger than even Pazuzu. Slowly he turned around. Jumping towards him was a blue insect man. The fact that he was hopping down the hall like a bunny rabbit did nothing to lessen Marco's fear of this new entity. The insect man stopped about twenty feet away, and stared at the Demon Lord's corpse, before sighing.

"I hoped that I wouldn't have to get involved. But it seems this ambush was more poorly thought out than I ever could have feared." Abaddon said, irritated, before turning to Marco, "That was neat trick by the way."

"Who are you." Marco said, making sure to put himself between Tom and this new threat, despite the terror he felt.

"Abaddon." The master of locusts said with a small bow, "Well, aren't you going to introduce yourself?"

Marco didn't respond, and instead stared at the insect demon with as much determination as he could muster.

"Rude." Abaddon said with a scoff. He flicked his cane at Marco, and the sound of locusts filled the air.

-000-

Pazuzu gave the goat head equivalent of smile. Victory was close at hand. The Lucitor's royal guards were all dead, prince Thomas and the obnoxious girl that came with him had certainly been killed by that Demon Lord by now, and Wrathmelior's mewman husband was finally starting to get worn down by the Night Hordes. As for the queen herself, she was almost finished. A well placed punch from Pazuzu knocked her backwards and off her feet. Wrathmelior flew backwards, and hit the ground, the marble floor shattering under her weight. Jumping into the air, Pazuzu came down on top of the queen, driving his feet into her stomach and embedding her further into the stone. With a small chuckle, Pazuzu opened his mouth, prepared to blast Wrathmelior with dark fire.

"Lord Pazuzu!" A tiny devil flew up to him urgently, "There are intruders in the Tower! The Butterfly princess **and** a Lecarde, with both the Morning Star and the lost spear. We've tried to stop them, but they're mowing down everything in their path. We've barely even slowed them down!"

"What!? Where the hell is Abaddon!?" Pazuzu stopped his attack to ask.

"He's fighting someone else. We aren't sure who, none of us are willing to get close enough to see." The tiny devil responded. A booming crash was heard and the room shook, the faint noise of locusts could be detected.

Pazuzu opened his mouth to speak, but was thrown off by Wrathmelior before could say anything. Landing on his feet, he watched queen Lucitor shakily rise to one knee, while drawing long, labored breaths. He started towards her, but stopped. As much as Pazuzu wanted to end this right now, there were more important things to attend to. Both a Butterfly and a Lecarde were storming his tower, and a mysterious adversary was engaging Abaddon, who would normally be his trump card in this type of scenario. With how things were going today, it wouldn't surprise him if the Magic High Commission showed up next. Pazuzu needed back up, and unfortunately, he knew exactly where to get it.

"Kill them." Pazuzu ordered his minions, "I must see that the intruders are dealt with."

He leapt into the air, and flew up to the balcony where he originally came from. Upon landing, he walked down the hall until he came to an elevator. Pazuzu entered it, and it traveled up to the very top of the tower. The cage opened, and he stepped out. In front of him was a heavy steel door, through it were his private quarters. Entering the room, he walked towards a collection of mirror shards floating in the air. When he approached, the shards joined together, forming a large mirror. He spoke a simple incantation, and the mirror turned black.

Then a face that was not Pazuzu's appeared in the mirror.

"It is good to hear from you. I must say, this is a pleasant surprise."

"Olrox." Pazuzu said, "I am in need of your aid. A Lecarde and a Butterfly are in my tower making a mess of things. She has the Vampire Killer with her."

"That makes me very happy to hear." Olrox said with a grin.

-000-

Cloudy flew up the elevator shaft, with Star and Sofía riding the spell. The chain that held up the cage had been cut in an attempt to stop or at least slow their rampage through the tower, so they instead had to fly up. Eventually, they came to a floor with a hallway lined with paintings, and jumped off of Cloudy. They had interrogated one of the servants on the Lucitor's location, and received the description of a painting filled hallway that led to a large circular room. In the far distance they heard a series of crashing noises.

The two of them ran down the hallway at breakneck speed, until they came to a large red door with a skull and crossbones on it. Beyond the door, they could hear the sounds of a battle. Sofía ran forward and kicked the door open, Star following closely behind. Inside they saw Wrathmelior being attacked by Night Creatures. In one hand she was holding her husband protectively, who seemed to be unconscious, while she tried to fend off her attackers with her other arm. She was clearly in bad shape, slumped against the wall with her clothing torn and her body covered in wounds, but the queen of the underworld refused to go down.

When Sofía and Star entered the room, everyone froze. The Night Creatures all turned to stare at them apprehensively. They waited for someone to make the first move, none of them willing to it themselves.

"We need to help Tom's mom and dad." Star said.

"Got it." Sofía replied, and dashed forwards.

Once Sofía moved, every Night Creature in the room charged forward. As they stampeded towards them, Star was reminded of the group of spirits that chased her inside Marco's mind. In fact, several of these demons looked like some of the spirits she saw there. But there were two key differences between now and the chase in Marco's head. The first and most major difference was Sofía. The hunter darted about the room like a ricocheting bullet. Any monster that came within reach of her spear died practically instantly. Leaping into the air, she stabbed the Alucard Spear into the ground, and ice spikes shot out around her, impaling everything within fifty feet of her.

A red minotaur and several other Night Creatures charged at Star, and the second difference between now and last time presented itself. Her new spell. She swung her wand at the minotaur and the chain whip shot forward. The mace took off its head, killing it instantly. Holy magic boiled inside its corpse, until it exploded, taking out the other Night Creatures near it. Star gave herself a proud smile, while Sofía may have done most of the monster slaying on this rescue mission so far, that didn't mean Star was useless. Also, that went far better than her last encounter with a minotaur.

However, she pulled back to the present when a four-armed sword wielding demon ran at her. Repeating the strategy that had worked for her up so far, Star swung the Morning Star Whip at it. Unfortunately it didn't work this time, as the demon deflected the mace with one of its swords. Star dodged back, barely avoiding having her head cut off. The Curly pressed forwards, swinging its swords at the princess, not noticing that its feet were right next to the chain of the whip on the ground. Star did notice though, and yanked her wand back, causing the chain to get caught around the demon's legs. Only the mace head of the whip channeled holy energy, so the Curly didn't explode, but it did trip. While it fell to the floor, Star darted forwards and grabbed the star-shaped mace head lying on the ground, and lobbed it directly at the Night Creature. The demon started to show the tell tale signs of whip induced explosion and Star quickly ran away from it. She didn't as far away as she might have liked, and was flung into the air when the Curly blew up.

Sofía deflected the axe swing of a minotaur, and sliced it in half with her spear. Immediately after, a Lilith darted at her. Spinning out of the way of the attack, the hunter conjured an ice spike up from the ground which stabbed through the demon. The hunter then thrusted her spear behind her, killing a Lubicant that tried to sneak up on her. As she pulled the Alucard Spear free, she looked around the room. The last of the Night Creatures was dead. Star ran past her towards the giant red demon woman. The room shook slightly from some large impact in the distance.

"Mrs. Tom's mom!" Star said as she ran up to them, "Are you okay?"

Wrathmelior made some noise that Star couldn't understand and held down the hand with Dave in it. He was unconscious, and had a large cut on his head, blood flowing from it. Wrathmelior made several pleading noises, and even though Star didn't know what she was saying, the princess understood that the queen wanted them to help her husband.

"Here." Sofía said, pulling a potion out of her coat, she handed it to Wrathmelior. Taking it between her thumb and forefinger, Wrathmelior carefully lifted it to Dave's lips. After a moment, he woke up coughing.

"Ugh, what's going on?" Dave asked, slightly dazed.

"Dave! Where's Tom and Marco?" Star asked.

"Tom? _Tom_!" Dave shot up, and looked around. He jumped out of his wife's hand, and stumbled when he hit the ground. Sofía managed to catch him before he could fall.

"Slow down. You're both badly injured." The hunter said.

"We need to find our son!" Dave said desperately, pushing away from Sofía. Wrathmelior shoved off from the wall and began limping across the room. She raised her hand and pointed at a large hole on the other side of the room, while saying something. Moving as fast as he could in his injured state, Dave started moving towards the hole with his wife.

"Hey wait-" Star froze mid sentence. Some _thing_ was approaching, something evil, something... _wrong_. Slowly, Star turned around, she wasn't even telling her body to do so, it just did. Atop the large balcony was a man. At least it looked like a man, a tall one with pale skin and a suit of purple armour. But it wasn't a man, it wasn't even suppose to be there, Star's mind screamed at her. It looked wrong somehow, like it shouldn't be, couldn't be. Yet it clearly was. Star's eyes hurt from looking at it, and she felt dizzy.

The vampire looked back at Star. For every second it held its gaze on her, she felt like she lost a little bit of her sanity. Sofía yelled something at her, telling her to run. The hunter charged at the vampire, but Pazuzu jumped in her path. The two of them began to fight, but Star scarcely noticed, trapped under the vampire's examining gaze. With a flash of light, the Vampire teleported in front of her. The rest of the world ceased to exist. There were no thoughts in her mind anymore, just white noise. The vampire grabbed her arm, just below the hand and held it up. He stared at the wand, and tilted his head thoughtfully.

"This... is not the source of the fritz." Olrox said, slightly puzzled. His voice sounded normal, and the words he spoke were mundane, but they burned deeply into Star's mind. He looked at the Vampire Killer, carefully examining its half crystal, "No, wait. It seems to be connected to something. Where is the other half of the crystal?"

There was no answer, Star stared blankly at him, unable to even understand the meaning of the words he had spoken. Olrox gave a sigh of disappointment, and then moved away suddenly. A small part of Star's mind began to function again, enough to recognise Sofía standing in front of her, with the Alucard Spear stabbed into the ground where Olrox had been. The hunter darted out of view, and there was a smashing noise from somewhere outside of her field of vision, like a wall being shattered. Slowly, Star could feel Olrox's presence, his wrongness, fade into the distance.

Pazuzu swore to loudly, and clutched a hand over his face. That bastard Lecarde cut out his goddamn eye. He had nearly gone the entire night without gaining any serious injuries, and then that bitch went and slashed his freaking eye out. He used that for seeing! Pazuzu was pissed, he wanted nothing more than to kill that asshole hunter, after he thoroughly tortured her first. Unfortunately, she was off battling Olrox, a battle she was unlikely to survive, so Pazuzu's chance's of getting revenge were pretty slim. Besides, he also wasn't too keen on actually facing her again. Then he noticed the Butterfly, still standing in the middle of the room, it seemed her encounter with Olrox had broken her. A thought occurred to Pazuzu, and he started towards the princess. Perhaps he could get his revenge another way.

Star stared at the ground. Her head was ringing, and the sound of her own heartbeat seemed deafeningly loud in her ears. Slowly, her mind started working like normal. It was like she had just woken up, and her still sleeping brain was just starting to catch up to her body. But the princess was still pretty out of it, unaware of what was going on around her. Unaware of Pazuzu approaching her, ready to put an end to her life.

Thankfully for Star, she wasn't the only person in the room. Dave and Wrathmelior watched in horror as the Night Creature made his way towards the princess. The king of the underworld tried to run to her, but he collapsed.

"Star!" Dave yelled.

It was enough to snap her back to reality, and not a moment to soon. Star noticed Pazuzu raising his fist to strike, and dived out of the way. His punch crashed into the stone floor with the force of a bomb, and Star was sent flying back. Rolling across the floor, Star scrambled to her feet, and turned to face Pazuzu. Quickly, she readied her wand, it seemed that the Morning Star had disappeared at some point. When that happened, Star wasn't sure.

"Morning Star Whip!" The princess whipped her wand forward, and the chain and mace shot towards Pazuzu. Seeing the most powerful weapon against the night rocketing towards his face, Pazuzu raised his arms in attempt to shield himself. The mace head impacted against his block with enough force to knocked him off balance despite bracing himself. Red light began to glow from Pazuzu's body, and an explosion sounded, creating an enormous cloud of smoke.

Star let out a sigh of relief and began to relax. Suddenly, a wave of fireballs shot out of the smoke. Star tried to dodge as they exploded around her, and was knocked off her feat when one hit the ground near her. Turning her attention to the dissipating smoke cloud, she saw Pazuzu, still alive with his right arm hanging limply at his side.

Sadly, the English language lacks words to truly describe just how angry he was at this moment. Think of the kind of rage that would drive the most pacifistic of people to kill, and then imagine it being felt by an already naturally murderous being. While this still doesn't quite get across the level of pissed that Pazuzu was, it does paint a very clear portrait of what he might do. Which is to say, kill everyone and everything in a six hundred and sixty seven mile radius.

Charging forward like a bloodlusted bull, Pazuzu tore up the ground underfoot as he ran at Star. In response, Star pulled her wand back, ready to whip the Night Creature a second time. However, while some lose all sense of reason when they get angry, Pazuzu's mind never felt clearer. Recognising the danger, he stopped and kicked a chunk of the floor at the princess. Large marble stones hurtled towards Star, and she was forced to stop her attack in order to avoid them. As she dodged to the side, Pazuzu finished his charge at her. He threw a punch at her, one too fast and too close for her to evade. The blow connected, and Star slammed into the ground, momentum carrying her forward so that she dug a long trench across the floor.

When her movement finally ceased, she tried to force her body to stand and fight. Instead, she barely rose to her knees, before coughing up blood and collapsing against the edge of the trench. A shadow appeared over her, and she looked up to see Pazuzu falling towards her, intent of crushing her beneath his heel. But Dave tackled her out of the way before the Night Creature could land atop her. The two mewmen were thrown back as Pazuzu came down, shattering the floor under him. He turned to them, his already sizable rage increasing for every second they stayed alive, when Wrathmelior slammed into him from behind. She grabbed onto him, and despite his best efforts he couldn't shake her off. But she knew she couldn't hold on much longer, and said something to Star.

"Now! Hit him now!" Dave translated.

Before the thought of accidentally hitting Wrathmelior could come to mind, Star swung her wand at Pazuzu. The star-shaped mace struck him in the abdomen, and for the second time today, Pazuzu exploded. The eruption of holy energy flung Wrathmelior through the air, and she was unconscious before she hit the ground.

On the other hand, Pazuzu still wasn't dead yet. Despite the large, bloody hole in his torso, he spewed a blast of fire at Star and Dave. Just as it was about to roast them alive, a second blast of flames intercepted it in midair. They all turned to look in the direction the fire came from. Standing in the large hole in the wall was Tom. He was in just as bad of shape as the rest of them, but that didn't stop him from flying forward and firing more jets of flame at Pazuzu's face. The Night Creature ran to confront the demon prince, even as fire hammered him in the face. By this point, pure anger was the only thing keeping him on his feet. Pazuzu got close enough to smack Tom to the ground. He raised his hoofed foot to stomp on the prince, but the Morning Star hit him in the back. Thrown to the ground by the explosion, Pazuzu struggled to rise, but failed as his body finally gave out.

"You- you haven't won." The Night Creature chocked out, using the last of his strength to raise his head and look at Star, "You cannot kill the night. Your day of peace is coming to an end, and a night more cursed and horrible than any known before will follow. Dracula's followers live on, and as dusk approaches they will come out of hiding. They will come for _you_ , Butterfly! They will finish what I-"

"For the love of- Just **die** already!" Star yelled, swinging her whip at his face.

A pained scream and a loud boom followed. And Pazuzu, demon lord of the underworld, died.

The chain coming from Star's wand disappeared, and she fell to her hands and knees as exhaustion and her wounds finally caught up to her. Everything hurt, it was hard to breath, her head felt like it was on fire, her vision blurred, and her mouth tasted like copper. Tom limped up to Star, and offered her a hand. She took it, and he lifted her to her feet.

"Are you okay?" The demon prince asked.

"Yeah, I think so." Star said in a tone that was strangely subdued for her. Right now, she was too tried to joke around like she normally would, "What about you?"

Tom started to say something but was interrupted by his father almost tackling him into a hug.

"Tom! Are you okay!?" Dave asked frantically.

"I'm fine, dad. I'm okay." Tom said, trying to reassure his father. Wrathmelior quickly made her way over and scooped up both of them into a tight embrace, trilling happily.

Star watched the family with a small smile, glad that they were together. Until Wrathmelior grabbed her too. With a small noise of surprise, Star was brought into the Lucitor family hug. After a moment, she just let it happen. She closed her eyes, and smiled wider, content in the knowledge that everyone was safe.

"Wait!" Star's eyes snapped open, "Tom! Where's Marco?!"

-000-

Several floors above, locusts the size of Marco's head bombarded his body, each one hitting him with the force of a cannonball. Both he and the locusts hit a stone wall, which promptly collapsed as the insects smashed into it. Marco was flung into the corridor beyond the destroyed wall, and he hit the ground. Slowly, and painfully he rose to his knees, his dress was badly torn, his hair had fallen out of his ponytail, and he was littered with bloody wounds. Once he was on one knee, he grabbed a High Potion and drank it, the medical connection mending some of more serious his injuries. Abaddon hopped through the hole into the room with him. Immediately, Marco fired a blast of lightning at the insect demon. But with a quick flick of his cane, a swarm of locusts appeared, flinging themselves in the path of the lighting in order to shield their master. Several burnt insects fell to the ground, and Abaddon stood there, unharmed.

"Is it glyphs? Like the kind Ecclesia used?" Abaddon asked. For the entire fight, the demon had been trying to guess what Marco's magic powers were. It wasn't typical spellcasting, he knew that, but couldn't figure out anything beyond that.

With the aid of his regeneration soul, Marco stood up and ran at Abaddon. The insect demon dramatically jabbed his cane in Marco's direction, and another swarm of locusts flew at him. Waiting until he was only a few feet from the insects, Marco jumped high into the air. In response, Abaddon made a complicated gesture with his cane, and the locust horde changed direction. It split into three separate swarms, each one coming at Marco from a different angle. Just as the three groups were about to hit him, Marco jumped in midair, and the locusts slammed into each other. Marco then shot towards Abaddon, prepared to kick the demon in the face. But Abaddon brought up his cane, and blocked the dive kick. With a shove, he threw Marco away and waved his cane to summon more locusts. The human boy landed on his feet, and quickly dodged back as a cloud of the pestilent insects flew at him. Whipping his cane about wildly, Abaddon directed the locusts to chase Marco as the boy darted about the room. Once he had put enough distance between himself and the swarm, Marco conjured up a vacuum cleaner shaped like a giant skull with a spinal cord for a hose and a dragon skull for a nozzle. It was not a normal vacuum, as one might have guessed from its appearance, it was a magic vacuum. As the locusts flew at him, they were sucked up by the horrible Hoover, and their life energy was transferred to Marco, healing him.

"Hold on a moment. That's the same type of vacuum that the Persephone maids use. How did you get it?" Abaddon said, truly puzzled, "Devil forging? No, I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way."

Before he could finish his musings, Marco charged at him. Abaddon swiped his cane forward, and another stream of locusts shot towards him. Behind Marco, the upper torso of a red ghost-like demon appeared.

"ORA ORA ORA!" The Guardian Cagnazzo shouted, throwing a never-ending series of rapid punches. Any locusts that approached Marco were pummeled instantly. He ran forward through the swarm, his spirit monster clearing a path for him with its fists.

Abaddon watched Marco push through the mass of insects, getting closer and closer to him. Finally Marco cleared the locust horde, and pointed his hand at the demon in order to fire a lightning bolt. But Abaddon pointed his cane at the floor, and then swung it upwards, raising his arms dramatically. The ground beneath Marco erupted as locusts swarmed up from below. The insects and chunks of the stone floor battered Marco's body.

When the cloud of locusts dissipated, Abaddon's eyes widened in shock. Instead of being thrown into the air by the swarm, Marco was in the exact same spot as before, floating over the large hole in the ground created by the locusts. Thanks to the both the Medusa Head's and Iron Golem's soul, he hadn't been moved an inch by the attack. With an outstretched arm, he discharged a bolt of lightning from his fingertips. Upon doing so, Marco used the last of his magic, and was unable to keep floating. He started to fall, but was able to grab onto the ledge of the hole. The lightning struck Abaddon clear in the chest, and the demon was flung backwards. Landing on his back, Abaddon sat up with an extremely annoyed expression on his face.

"You managed to hit me." He said in an aggravated tone, "That's rather impressive on your part, I'm _forced_ to admit. But I'm afraid it's time I ended this farce."

Abaddon stood up and pointed his cane at Marco, who was slowly pulling himself out of the pit, and began making a small swirling motion with it. A low rumble filled the room, and the everything began to shake. The tremors grew more intense, which was making it rather difficult for Marco to pull himself up, he was already in a lot of pain and extremely tired. Finally, he lifted himself out of the hole, just in time to see an utterly gargantuan cloud of locusts barreling towards him. It was so large that it stretched from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling. Spinning like a sideways tornado made of bugs, the locusts shredded everything in their path, except for Abaddon, who they flowed around. With what little magic he had managed to recover, Marco created a magic shield in front of himself. Whenever a locust collided with the shield it was destroyed, and a blast of holy magic fired back. But there where too many locusts, and the magic blasts where swallowed by the swarm. Quickly, before he ran out of magic again, Marco pulled out Mind Up and drank it. While he still didn't like Quest Buy, he had to admit they did sell something useful stuff, even if it was buried behind all the useless crap.

Even with the extra magical energy granted by the Mind Up, Marco couldn't hold up his shield forever. He needed to stop Abaddon. Marco took a deep breath and called upon the soul of the Demon Lord. A dark portal appeared in front of him and a massive ball of darkness and fire shot forth from it. It plowed through the cloud of locusts, not even slowed down. Inside the mass of insects, Abaddon felt the air around him heat up, and saw the locusts in front of him burst into flames as the Dark Inferno came at him. He raised his cane to try and block it, but the sphere of destruction slammed into him, and carried him backwards. Abaddon struggled in vain to try and push it away, until it pulsed and exploded.

The explosion shook the tower from top to bottom. The walls, floor and ceiling around the explosion had melted, and the walls across the entire level were knocked down or destabilised. Without any sort of support, the upper part of the tower toppled over, breaking away from the lower half and crashing to the ground below. Both Marco and Abaddon had fallen to a lower level, since the ground below them had been completely destroyed. With the ceiling above them gone, soullight from the underworld's equivalent of a sun shined down on them.

Pain filled every fiber of Marco's being, to point where he almost couldn't feel it. Almost. Summoning the Guardian Alura Une, vines grew out of Marco's body. From the vines grew a large flower, and inside that flower was a woman. She stretched her arms out, and hovered her hands over Marco. His wounds began to mend, but shortly into the healing process he ran out of magic again, and the Guardian Alura Une disappeared. Fortunately, he had healed enough to move again, and was able to drink another potion. While it wasn't enough get rid of all his injures, it was enough to let him stand, and more importantly, it was enough to let him fight.

A short distance away, Abaddon rose to his feet, using his cane to support himself for the first time since he got it. Blood from a cut on his forehead ran down his face, and his left arm hurt when he moved it. Both were rather minor injuries, but they were the most serious wounds he had ever sustained. Few beings were actually powerful enough threaten him, and he typically made a point to avoid the ones that could. Normally, the realization that that human princess was one of those beings would complete shock him. But right now, Abaddon was shocked for different reasons.

That attack. That attack was Dark Inferno. As far as he knew, there was only one being capable of using that kind of magic. Some of the Demon Lords had similar powers, but they weren't the same. They lack the power, the mastery of darkness and Chaos. Carefully, Abaddon raised his head to look at Marco. For the first time in a long while, Abaddon was afraid.

"That- that attack." The master of locusts said, his voice weak. That was Dracula's attack, "W-what are you?"

Marco began walking towards him. With every step, Abaddon grew more and more concerned. For almost the entire fight, he had been toying with the human, but now he wondered if it hadn't been the other way around.

"I am Marco Diaz." The boy spoke. In his mind he finished, ' _Nothing more, and no one else._ '

"Ah, I see." Abaddon replied politely, "Well, sorry about trying to kill you. I hope the rest of the coup goes your way. And um... Have a nice life."

When he finished speaking, locusts began to swirl around him. The swarm broke apart, and Abaddon had vanished. Having turned into a swarm of locusts himself, the group of bugs that would eventually reform into his body flew as far away as possible.

"Hey! Get back here!" Marco ran to spot where Abaddon had been, but the demon was gone. Growling, he stamped his feet in anger. Sure it was immature, but he was annoyed goddammit!

Still, maybe it was for the best. The fight had hardly been going Marco's way. If it had continued he would have almost certainly died. But now he had a different problem. Almost no one had ever actually seen him use his souls and lived to tell about it. He could count the number of people who knew about his powers on his hands, and the ones that weren't Hekapoo and Arikado were completely unimportant civilians. Now, he had a Night Creature and demon lord running around with rather extensive knowledge of his abilities. Marco even gave Abaddon his goddamn name! In hindsight that was really, extremely, exceptionally stupid of him.

Kicking a piece of debris in frustration, Marco started to try and make his way back to the large circular room where Tom and his family were. This coup wasn't over yet.

-000-

In the dungeons beneath the tower, two demon guards stood on duty. They were some of the few guards still there, many of them had been called up for reinforcements to try and stop the two hunters that attacked the castle. The rest had simply deserted their posts and run away. As the dungeon shook from the battle raging in the tower above, the two guards wondered if maybe the deserters had the right idea. Then, a scream was heard, and the pair wondered if the dungeon was under attack by the intruders. But then they realised that the scream came from further into the dungeon, where the prisoners were kept.

Pazuzu's dungeons weren't like most. They weren't meant to house people who wronged him or broke the laws of his land. Instead, these dungeons were created to contain the most dangerous souls in hell. Souls that, even in death, had grown strong enough cause trouble and possibly even escape back to the land of the living.

Turning around, the pair saw one of their fellow guards turn a corner and run towards them. A massive splash of blood covered her armour, her weapon was drawn, and she wore a terrified expression. Before either of them could open their mouths to ask her what was going on, a sword flew around the corner and stab the guard through the head. Another sword followed after and bisected her at the waist. Both swords floated back into the air, along with the sword the dead guard had been holding, as a man came into sight.

The first thing the guards noticed about him was that he floating off the ground. In terms of his appearance, he looked mostly human. White, neck length hair framed his pale face. He wore a metal breastplate over an elegant blue robe. But he had some inhuman traits, the tips of his fingers had sharp, claw-like nails, and a dark aura flowed from him. On both arms, just above the wrist, were metal shackles, the chains broken off.

Immediately, they knew the man to be one of the souls imprisoned in the dungeon. The guards drew their own swords, their fear quickly growing. The three swords levitated in front of the prisoner, and two of them shot forward, one heading at each guard. Both guards managed to deflect the swords that came their way, but then the third blade sailed forward and stabbed one of them through the eye before he could react. The remaining guard charged at the escaped inmate, hoping to kill him while he had no weapons. Raising both his hands in front of his face, in a praying gesture, magic flowed from the prisoner into the ground. A large blade made of glowing magic shot up from the floor, stabbing into the guard and slicing her body in two.

All five swords rose into the air, and hovered over to the man. With the swords orbiting around him, Joachim made his way out of the dungeon.

-000-

Olrox flew backwards down a hallway at high speeds, with his arms folded in front of him, trailing after images. Chasing after him on foot was Sofía. Unfortunately, she couldn't match the vampire's speed and was quickly falling behind. Once Olrox had put enough distance between himself and his pursuer, he landed. Raising his arm above his head, a black void appeared above him, and several skulls coated in spectral flames flew out of it. The skulls floated towards Sofía. As she charged at Olrox, she cut down a few of the skulls that came in her path, not bothering to stop and destroy them all. Sofía reached him and thrusted her spear at the vampire, but he jumped back with blinding speed at the last second. Olrox then outstretched his hand, and a pool of wavering blood red magic formed on the ground beneath Sofía. She dashed backwards as a pillar of mystical energy erupted up from the pool. However, the hunter then turned around to find herself surrounded by the skulls that she neglected to kill earlier.

Quickly, she raised the Alucard Spear above her head and twirled it like a baton. As she did, shards of ice formed in the air around her, circling around Sofía at tornado speeds. The ice shards sliced through the skulls, destroying them. Lamentably, fighting the skulls had distracted her and just as the ice cut them to ribbons, a blast of magic hit Sofía in the back. The force of the blast hurled her through the air. She clipped the side of a support column and took a large chunk out of the stone, before hitting the ground. Sofía sprung to her feet, wincing at the pain coming from the wound the attack left, and looked around for Olrox. In a flash of light, the vampire teleported in front of her and fired another wave of magic at the hunter. This time, she managed to raise her spear to block the spell, but was still knocked back. Sofía crashed through the wall behind her and landed in a large room filled with gears and pistons that stretched up for several stories.

"I must sadly admit, I am disappointed. I expected more of a hunter from the famed Lecarde clan." Olrox said as he rose into the air, "I also didn't expect her to be fighting in her jim-jams."

"Some of us still need to sleep you vampiric bastard." Sofía said indignantly as she stood up.

Olrox floated through the hole into the room, then promptly flew up to the top. While up there, and raised his arm and summon a large number of bats. Not willing to make the same mistake as last time, Sofía spun in place, conjuring several icicles in front of her. As the bats flew at her, she fired the icicles at them. Each one hit, impaling the flying mammals. With the bats gone, Sofía jumped up to a large gear several yards above, as she began scaling the clockworks. Just as she was about to jump to another gear, the entire tower shook violently. Both Sofía and Olrox sensed a massive surge of dark magic, one that felt particularly familiar to Olrox.

For it was at this moment that Marco's dark inferno exploded. Pieces of machinery began to fall down as the tower splintered in half, taking the top most part of the clockwork room with it. Olrox calmly hovered in place, even as the walls and ceiling were ripped away around him. If she had stopped to process what was going on around her, Sofía would probably have been panicking. But right now, she was focused entirely on Olrox, and the fact that everything was literally falling apart around her was just another obstacle she needed to overcome.

As giant gears and chunks of stone plummeted to the ground, Sofía leaped into the air. Landing on one of the falling pieces of debris, she quickly bounded to a gear tumbling through the air. She continued jumping between the pieces of the collapsing tower, and Olrox flew down to confront her. As the hunter landed on a broken piece of pipe sticking out of the wall, Olrox fired a blast of magical energy at her. Sofía managed to leap away at the last second, and the spell hit the wall, destroying even more the room. Whilst in the air, she twirled around and shot a huge icicle at Olrox, but the vampire teleported away before it could hit him. Sofía landed on a falling cogwheel, but the second her feet touched it, a rippling field of red magic formed on the gear. Before she could leap away, a flock of bats mobbed her. As hastily as possible, the hunter killed them and jumped off the gear. Though the bat were hardly dangerous, little more than annoyances, they still delayed her by precious moments. A surge of magic shot up from the red pool, catching the left side of Sofía's body. The geyser of magic tossed the hunter high into the air, until she landed violently on a metal walkway attached precariously to the wall near the top of the room. It shook for a moment, threatening to come loose, but ultimately held. Just as she began to stand, a massive gear soared upwards and collided with her. Over a dozen tons of steel crashed into Sofía's body at high speeds, carrying her forward as they both broke through the wall behind her. Bouncing across the floor beyond the wall, she lost her grip on the Alucard Spear, dropping the precious artifact. Eventually, she came to a stop by slamming into a large chunk of stone rubble. She rose to a siting position, and leaned against the stone rubble, resting for a moment under the soullight streaming down from above. Even the simple act of siting up caused incredible pain. Reaching into her coat, Sofía grabbed a High Potion from her coat. As she raised it to her lips to drink it, Olrox warped right in front of her. He stretched his arm out, and discharged a wave of magic directly into her face.

The rubble she was leaning against shattered to pieces, but before Sofía could go flying back, Olrox grabbed the hunter by the throat. The whiplash very nearly snapped her neck. Holding her off the ground, Olrox made sure his grip was strong enough that she couldn't escape but loose enough for her to breath.

"The Lecarde's are the guardians of the wand are they not? Tell me, do you know where the other half of the Vampire Killer's crystal is, and how it became cleaved?" Orlox asked politely. Well, as politely as one could be when lifting someone their neck.

"Y-you!" Sofía said, with dawning realisation. Ignoring how much talking hurt, she continued, "You were the one who sent those vampires after Star. You're the master of the coven I've been hunting."

"Ah, so you must be the hunter who has been killing my servants. How nice to finally meet you." Olrox said, "However, I asked you a question, and I would appreciate it if you would answer."

"Why? Why do you care so much about the Butterfly wand?" Sofía asked.

"If I tell you, will you answer my question?" Orlox asked, "I would prefer to not resort to torture. It's highly ineffective, especially against you hunter types."

"I'll consider it." Sofía replied curtly.

"I swear, they must breed hunter clans for their stubbornness." Olrox said with mild annoyance, "Surely you have noticed that the power of magic is growing fainter throughout the dimensions. It is my belief that someone is tampering with the realm of magic. Initially I thought they were using the Vampire Killer to do so, but it seems that is not the case. However, half of the wands crystal is missing, that missing half may be the key to figuring out what is causing magic to go on the fritz. So, I need you to tell me what happened to the other half of the crystal."

"Why do you care?" Sofía asked.

"Simple curiosity." Olrox replied. His grip on her throat tightened threateningly "Now then, answer my question."

"I don't know." Sofía said, "I don't know how it was cleaved or where it is."

"I was the under the impression that you were suppose to guard the wand. Are you actually telling me that you have no clue as to how it was fractured?" Olrox asked.

Sofía shrugged in response, then immediately regretted doing so due to the amount of pain it caused her.

"My lord, you terrible at your job." Olrox said.

Olrox suddenly leapt away, dropping Sofía, as a surge of holy blue fire flared up where he had been standing. Marco jumped down from atop the ruined walls, landing between Sofía and the vampire, as the hunter pushed herself up to her hands and knees. While trying to find a stairway to the lower levels that wasn't collapsed or clogged with rubble, he heard sounds of a fight, and felt Olrox's presence and quickly made his way toward it. He had been surprised to see Sofía here, but upon seeing that she needed help, he jumped in.

Marco watched Olrox nervously. He was easily the strongest vampire Marco had ever encountered, and he just used the last of his holy water, the only thing he had that stood a chance at hurting Olrox. So, unless Sofía fainted soon, and Marco could use his souls, the chances of him actually being able to do anything to Olrox were slim. Hell, even if he could use souls, he wasn't very confident in his ability to hurt the vampire.

Meanwhile, Olrox regarded Marco with curiosity. He could sense the human's dark powers, but wasn't quite sure what to make of them. Was this human princess the source of that powerful surge of dark energy earlier? It was unlikely, considering how similar the earlier dark magic felt to Dracula's power. But Olrox couldn't rule out the possibility.

"Marco!" Yelled a voice in the distance. Star's voice. Without thinking, Marco turned to the source of the shout, she was clearly on this floor but still far away. Immediately, he cursed himself for letting himself get distracted, and snapped back to face Olrox. However, the vampire hadn't taken advantage of the opening, and was still standing in the same spot he had been before.

"The Butterfly. Pazuzu is most likely dead then." Olrox observed, then gave a sigh, "It seems this outing yielded little fruit."

Well, it wasn't a complete waste of time. Even if the wand wasn't actually the source of the fritz, it did seem to be connected somehow. Now, he just needed to find the other half of the crystal. Also, he encountered something else that might prove interesting.

With a final glance at Marco, Olrox waved his hand and a portal tore open.

"There is a high chance we'll meet again. So, until then." He said, and passed through the portal.

With Olrox gone and the portal closed, Marco let out a breath he didn't realise he had been holding. Turning to face Sofía, he handed her a potion for her to drink. Once she downed, Marco helped the hunter to her feet, slinging her arm over his shoulder. They heard Star shout his name again, and started walking in the direction of her voice.

"Thanks for the potion." Sofía said in a very tired voice, and Marco realised just how exhausted he was too, "I kind of ran out earlier."

"It's no problem." Marco said, though internally he thought that she needed to conserve her medicine better, "Why are you in your pajamas?"

"Cause I was sleeping when Star called me for help." Sofía said, "Why are you in a dress?"

"Cause I'm a princess, duh." Marco replied, too tired to give an explanation that made sense, "So wait, why are you and Star here?"

"She called me and told me that you were in hell and needed help, so we came to rescue you." Sofía said.

"How did Star know I was in trouble?" Marco asked. Sofía almost shrugged, but thought better of it at the last second.

At that moment, both Star and Tom rounded the corner. Upon seeing Marco and Sofía, they ran towards them at breakneck speeds. When they reached them, the two royals thankfully managed to resist the urge to tackle hug them. A good thing too, since they would have certainly been knocked over.

"Marco! Sofía! Are you okay!?" Star asked.

"Dude, where did you go!? How are you still alive?!" Tom asked.

"I'm fine. Don't worry." Marco said. It was actually true for the most part, ' _Thank God for my regeneration soul._ '

"I've definitely had better days." Sofía commented.

"What happened? I was certain that Demon Lord killed you!" Tom said.

"Gee, thanks." Marco said with a roll of his eyes, "I'll have you know I actually killed _it_."

"How." Tom said bluntly, with confused eyes.

"Um, holy water." Marco lied, "Lots of holy water."

"I'm so glad you're okay," Star said, giving Marco a hug. When she broke away, she looked around the destroyed area and at the lack of a ceiling, "Jeez! What happened here?"

"The tower broke in half. Not sure how." Sofía said, "Marco, you have any clue?"

Marco responded with a confused 'eh'.

"Hey, Marco. Sorry you got caught up in this mess." Tom apologised. After tonight, he felt like a complete buffoon for not taking the threats of the coup seriously, and he felt like it was his fault that Marco got involved.

"Dude, it's fine. I mean, we're both alive after all." Marco said with a smile. He knew what he was getting himself into the moment he learned about the Night Creatures.

"H-hey Sofía, what happened to the..." Star paused and swallowed nervously, "The vampire?"

"He escaped." Sofía said bitterly.

"Escaped implies having to run away. He just left, probably because he felt he had better things to do than kick our butts around." Marco said.

"Thank you for that." Sofía said, completely deadpanned, while shooting Marco an unamused look.

"Wait, you saw the vampire?" Star asked Marco, her eyes widening.

"Yeah, why?" Marco replied.

"N-no reason." Star said, looking away.

"Speaking of the vampire. I need to go now." Sofía said, pushing off of Marco.

"Go? Go where?" Star asked.

"He was far more powerful than I ever expected. Something that dangerous can't be allowed to roam the universe. But I lost to him, badly." Sofía said, walking over to where the Alucard Spear was lying of the floor and picked it up, "I need to train and get stronger, so that I can kill him next time."

"Wait, but you haven't finished teaching me yet." Star said.

"You've already graduated. You cast the Morning Star didn't you?" Sofía said, she then grabbed a thick tome out of her coat, "As for my other student. Here, give this to Janna for me. It'll have to do in my place."

"Are you leaving right now?" Marco asked.

"That depends, are all the Night Creatures gone, and do you kids have a way of getting home?" Sofía asked.

"Star and I didn't see any while we were looking for Marco. So, they're probably all dead or gone." Tom said.

"And, I have a pair of scissors." Marco added.

"Then I'll be taking my leave." Sofía said, taking out her dimensional scissors, "Goodbye, Star. I hope to see you again soon."

"Goodbye Sofía." Star said with a sad smile.

Sofía cut her scissors through the air... and nothing happened. She did it again, and still no portal formed.

"Oh, what the heck!? I just saw that vampire open a portal five minutes ago!" Sofía said, frustrated, "Don't tell me the Tramorfidian Crystal survived! Over half the tower was destroyed!"

"I can give you a lift back to earth." Tom offered.

"I'd appreciate that." Sofía said.

-000-

Olrox sat in a comfortable chair in his private study. All around him books were stacked, piled, strewn about, and levitating in the air. From the instant he returned to his castle, the vampire locked himself in his study, and began pouring over the tomes he had. When he failed to find the information he was looking for inside them, he ordered his servants to fetch him more books from the castle library, and then from other libraries across the dimensions. After several hours, he came to a conclusion. The Butterfly wand had never been cleaved before now. While this left him with little to no information to work with, it also excited him, and Olrox quickly wrote down his observations and hypotheses. While he did this, a knock came at the door to his study.

"Master Olrox. There is a visitor here to see you." One of his underlings said through the door.

"Very well, show them to the dining room, I'll be down to see them in a moment." Olrox said.

Once he had finished, he left his study and made his way to the dining room. It was a very tall room, with a massive stained-glass window stretching from floor to ceiling. In the centre sat a large stone table, with two chairs on either end. It was an exact replica of the room in Dracula's Castle where Olrox had fought Alucard, a fight he remembered vividly and fondly. Waiting for him inside the room, was Abaddon.

"Hello Abaddon, to what do I owe this unexpected visit?" Olrox asked as he took a seat at the table, "Please, sit."

"No thank you, I'll stand. I've come to talk about what happened at Pazuzu's tower. I understand that you were there when it all went down." Abaddon said.

"I was not there for the beginning. Pazuzu called for my aid once the battle was already well underway." Olrox said, "What specifically do you wish to discuss?"

"When the tower broke in half, you must have noticed a great dark power." Abaddon said, growing serious.

"Indeed. Do you know what the source of that surge of darkness was?" Olrox said, leaning forward in excitement and curiosity.

"Yes, it was a Dark Inferno." Abaddon said quietly.

"Huh." Was all Olrox had to say, leaning back in seat and crossing his legs, "Now that is interesting."

"But that should be impossible, right?! Only Dracula can use that spell!" Abaddon shouted.

"No." Olrox replied curtly.

"No!?" Abaddon repeated in shocked bewilderment.

"While the spell is a magic tied to the Dark Lord, there are others with connections to him capable of using it. In fact, I have encounter another being capable of casting Dark Inferno. Dracula's son, Alucard." Olrox said, "Tell me, who cast it?"

"I-it was that human princess." Abaddon said, and Olrox smiled.

"Well, it seems that the human child is even more interesting than I ever could I guessed." Olrox said, "I wonder what sort of relation to our late lord they have. Perhaps they're Alucard's offspring."

"Do you plan on going after her?" Abaddon asked.

"Not at the moment. I have something else I'm focused on." Olrox responded, "But I _will_ investigate this more. If you wish to join-"

"No." Abaddon interrupted, "I prefer to avoid beings as powerful as that. Especially if I'm on their bad side."

"Understandable. Thank for informing me on this." Olrox said, standing up. As Abaddon turned to leave, Olrox spoke again, "One last question. Do I dare hope that you may be able to tell me their name?"

"Actually, yes. Their name is Marco Diaz." Abaddon said, and Olrox's smile grew.

* * *

 **You know, for how long this chapter is, I think I finished it fairly quickly. Also, I probably should have cut it in half, but couldn't find a good spot to do so. So, you get this ungodly long monstrosity.**

 **If you're wondering why Olrox nearly caused Star to go mad from the revelation, that was inspired by a line of dialogue from _Portrait of Ruin_ , where Charlotte states that Brauner is so powerful that a normal man would go insane from the mere sight of him. So, I thought it would be interesting if all vampires were lowkey eldritch abominations, and it just becomes more pronounced the stronger they get. After all, vampires in Castlevania do have a connection to Chaos.**

 **Only a few people besides Dracula have ever canonically used Dark Inferno to my knowledge. They are Alucard, Dracula's son, Shanoa, via the power of Dominus, Soma, who is Dracula, and Graham, who was well on his way to becoming the next Dark Lord. Also, I might have buffed Dark Inferno's power a little. It was completely spur of the moment decision, as in, I literally decided to do so as I was writing the paragraph.**

 **I also buffed Olrox. He's quite a bit stronger here than he was in** _ **Symphony of the Night**._ **Once again, this was inspired by that Castlevania novel (Which I still haven't read, but I have read about on wikis and the like), where Olrox was apparently powerful enough to fight Death.**

 **The power levels in the chapter might be a bit wonky compared to the others. Unfortunately, I didn't notice until after I finished writing. Sorry about that, I'll try to do better in the future.**

 **I'm kind of worried I've been writing too many action scenes, especially since this chapter was basically all fight scenes. I'm going to try and write some slower chapters in the future.**

 **Next chapter, we're finally getting back to the plot of the show. It's been a bit too long.**


	9. Chapter 9: Jail of Jewels

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or** **Castlevania**

* * *

Stay laid on her bed, with her head hanging off of the mattress. She held her wand in front of her, and she stared at the holographic clock face that was currently projected from its crystal. Watching as the second hand ticked slowly until a minute had passed, and then repeating the process sixty times until an hour passed. By now, it was after 2 A.M. and Star had been watching the clock since twelve forty-seven. Originally, she had been trying bore herself to sleep, and while it was pretty obvious that it wasn't working, she kept focusing on the clock anyway, because doing so took enough of her brain-power that it prevented her exceptionally tired mind from wandering. For in the late hours of the night, just as sleep is about to take you, the mind has a habit of bringing up things that you would rather not think of, ensuring that you won't get to sleep for a while longer. And for the third night in a row, Star's mind refused to let her sleep by bringing up memories of one thing in particular. Her encounter with Olrox.

Every second of it had been carved into her mind with perfect clarity. Star had a feeling that she would never forget it, nor would it ever fade and become less clear as memories often do, even years from now, she knew she would be able to recall every horrifying detail. Sometimes, she felt silly for being so terrified, all he did was grab her arm and talk to her, compared to a lot of the other things she had gone through it seemed tame. But then Star remembered everything about him. Nothing she encountered before felt half as evil, nothing had made question her own sanity afterwords. That vampire felt like he had crawled out of the nightmares of a madman, it felt like a being of personified fear and Chaos. The night after Star met him, she hadn't been able to sleep, and the only reason she slept the second night because she literally collapsed of exhaustion.

As Star watched the clock tick over to two thirty, she realised it was unlikely that she would get any sleep tonight. She'd probably collapse again sometime tomorrow, but right now she just wasn't exhausted enough to fall asleep, not while the memories of the vampire plagued her. Eventually, Star sat up and got out of bed. She left her room and headed across the hall to Marco's room. Quietly, which in her sleep deprived state simply meant slowly, she opened his door and peered into the room. Marco was fast asleep in bed, which was good for her since she was about to do something he definitely wouldn't approve of. Still, it bugged her that he could sleep so easily while she found it impossible to get any rest, especially since he claimed to have seen the vampire as well.

Moving away from Marco's door, Star tiptoed across the hall and down the stairs. She made her way to the kitchen, which she had been unofficially banned from after her last disastrous attempts at cooking. But she wasn't here to do any cooking tonight, unless pouring a bowl of cereal somehow counted as cooking. Hidden behind the dog food was a box of _Captain Blanche's Sugar Seeds_ , Star's favorite cereal. Right now she needed some comfort food, plus with any luck when the sugar rush wore off, the ensuing crash would be enough to knock her out. As she grabbed the cereal out of the cupboard, she noticed several sticky notes attached to the front of the box. They were all written by Marco, telling her not to touch his cereal, and he would find out if she did. Star laughed quietly at the warnings, Marco had this ridiculous notion that she always ate all of the cereal, besides he would never find out. She then poured over half the box into her bowl of milk.

Suddenly, a ray of magic stuck Star, resulting in a burst of light. When the light faded, Star was encased in a block of crystal, and her precious _Sugar Seeds_ had been spilled across the ground, wasted. A tall cloaked figure with a crystal for a head stepped forward. Rhombulus threw his cloak open, and tried to pick up Star. Unfortunately, the crystal she was stuck in was quite heavy, and he had socks on his hands which made it quite impossible to get a good grip on her. As a result, he wound up dropping the crystal twice, with it landing on his foot the second time. Finally, Rhombulus managed to lift the princess without immediately dropping her, when the kitchen light turned on. Standing in the doorway to the kitchen with wide eyes was Marco. For a moment, the two just stared at each other. Then Marco lunged at Rhombulus.

-000-

One has to question the logistics of a palace made entirely of crystal. Was the crystal that made up the floors, walls, and much of the furniture the same kind crystal that Rhombulus imprisoned evil-doers in? It certainly appeared to be. But then, how did anyone manage to carve such a nigh-indestructible material into the shapes found throughout the palace? Perhaps it was all Rhombulus' doing, and the time-out guy was actually a skilled craftsman and builder. And who the heck designed the layout? For God's sake, the prison area was combined with the general living space. These were questions that had passed through the minds of most visitors, though curiously none of them had ever bothered to asked Rhombulus. Some had asked Lekmet, but his answers tended to be less than helpful.

"Chancellor Lekmet!" A mildly beat-up Rhombulus called out as approached a flight of crystal stairs.

At the top of the stairs, a wall made of crystals slide apart, revealing the goat chancellor. He stood tall and proud with his bat-like wings outspread. Until he noticed that Rhombulus was alone, at which point he let out an undignified bleat, and hunched over tiredly.

"My liege." Rhombulus said, kneeling before the chancellor, "I come bearing an offering of great momentousness, should it please thee."

Noticing something behind Rhombulus that was covered by his cape, Lekmet baaed a response.

"Um, well, i-it's kinda heavy." Rhombulus said awkwardly. He was barely able to carry the princess back to the crystal palace, and didn't relish the idea of trying to haul her up a flight of stairs, "I was hoping that thee could come down here to see it."

With a put upon sigh, Lekmet walked towards the steps and sat in the stair lift at the top. The chair glowed with mystic energy and began moving down the stairs, only to jerk to stop half a second later, spewing sparks. Lekmet glared at the chair in annoyance, and started smacking it to try and get it working again.

"Oh, dang! Is that on the fritz too?" Rhombulus said, dropping any attempt at sounding official as he ran up the steps, "Oh, hang on. I've got you."

Effortlessly, Rhombulus picked up Lekmet and put the tall goat demon on his shoulder like a child. Lekmet's wings fluttered slightly for balance, and Rhombulus started carrying him down the stairs. As they descended, the chancellor noticed a small crack on Rhombulus' gem head and gave a concerned bleat.

"Huh, oh I'm fine. It's just a small scratch." Rhombulus said, and Lekmet baaed again, "Oh, I've been actually looking into looking into the interdimensional fritz too, and I sorta ran into a bit of trouble. Nothing I couldn't handle of course. But it was totally worth it, cause I think I found what's causing the fritz."

He set Lekmet down, and the goat demon bleated excitedly.

"Stay right there!" Rhombulus said joyfully, and ran over to the crystal covered by his cloak, "I present to you, the source of the fritz!"

As he finished his sentence, he dramatically removed his cape to reveal Star Butterfly trapped inside one of his crystals. Lekmet stared in shock, before giving a very panicked baa that clearly said 'What the hell!?'.

"Evidence?! I've never needed evidence before!" Rhombulus replied, to which Lekmet bleated angrily at him, "Okay, look, my gut told me she's evil, so I took her out. Boom! No more fritz."

Rubbing his eyes, Lekmet baaed wearily.

"M-maybe it will take a few minutes. But the fritz is definitely going to stop soon now. Gut's honor." Rhombulus said. The chancellor gestured at Star and gave another bleat, "Yeah, I know she's Queen Butterfly's daughter, but-"

More bleating from Lekmet cut him off and Rhombulus looked hurt by the goat demon's baas.

"Okay, th-that kinda hurt. I know it came from a good place, you know, but-" Rhombulus was interrupted again, not by Lekmet this time, but by the sock on his left hand bursting open, freeing the green snake head that served as his extremity. It proceeded to draw several deep breaths of fresh air, before speaking.

"Okay, Chancellor, for the record, we had nothing to do with this." The left snake hand said. When he finished talking, the sock on Rhombulus' right arm broke open as well.

"Yeah, we told him it was a horrible plan!" The right snake hand said, before shooting a dirty glare at Rhombulus, "But Rockhead here didn't wanna hear it."

"He never listens to us!" The left snake hand added.

"But, he would listen to you, Lekmet!" The right one said.

"Tell him, Chancellor!" Leftie pleaded.

"Tell him!" Rightie urged.

In response, Lekmet clutched his face and bleated unhappily. Barely anyone could understand what he was actually saying, so almost no one asked for his opinion or treated him like an authority. He wasn't used to it, and it was stressing him out even more than he already was.

"Okay, everybody just calm down!" Rhombulus yelled, trying to be the voice of reason. Which happens to be a sign of the apocalypse in at least twelve different religions across the universe. He walked Lekmet over to a chair, and sat him down, "Why don't you sit? I'll grab you a glass of warm milk, and then we can talk this out like rational people."

While he spoke, Rhombulus walked over to a refrigerator and opened it. Once he did, a crystal containing Marco tumbled out. The human was glaring furiously with his arm stretched out in front of him, and the crystal he was trapped in was badly cracked. Lekmet gave a horrified baa at the sight of a young boy falling out of his fridge.

"This isn't as bad as it looks!" Rhombulus quickly said, picking up the damaged crystal, "He had this wicked dark aura! I'm not really sure what it was, maybe a like dhampir or Devil Forgemaster or something, but it was definitely evil. You just can't sense it right now, since he's in the crystal, but it's there. Trust me!"

By now, Lekmet had had enough. Bleating seriously, the chancellor reared up to his full height, standing quite a bit taller Rhombulus.

"You'll what!? No, please don't call the Magical High Commission." Rhombulus begged.

Lekmet glared down at Rhombulus and baaed more.

"You- you think we should make other living arrangements?" Rhombulus said, heartbroken. Lekmet bleated a noise of conformation, "But, who's gonna take care of you?"

Ignoring Rhombulus, the chancellor walked past him towards the magic mirror on the wall. In spite of Rhombulus pleading him to stop, Lekmet pulled back the currents covering the mirror and began dialing a number of the keypad next to it, as it was an older model that didn't have saved contacts.

"You'll ruin everything! Stop! **STOP!** " Rhombulus shouted in desperation. With a frustrated yell, he fired a ray of magic at Lekmet, trapping the goat demon in a crystal. Instantly, he regretted his decision.

"Dude. You just crystallised the High Chancellor!" His right snake hand said, almost unable to believe what Rhombulus did.

"Do you have any idea how much trouble we are in?!" The left one shouted hysterically.

"Stop yelling at me!" Rhombulus yelled, trying desperately to stave off panic, "Look, I just really need a win right now. I mean, you guys are my hands! You're supposed to be on my side! Can't you just, um. Ugh."

With a defeated sigh, Rhombulus hung his head in shame. He just screwed up, big time, more than he ever had before, and that's saying something. But this time, he had no clue how he was going to fix it, and he couldn't exactly ask anyone for help.

"Hey." The right hand snake said gently, "I bet a few reps would clear your head."

As it spoke, it gestured over to some exercise equipment just a few feet away. This was a room were the layout only got more confusing the longer you spent in it.

"You know, that's not a bad idea." Rhombulus admitted.

"Some bench presses, maybe couple of bicep curls." As the right hand spoke, it kept glancing at something to Rhombulus' side.

"What are you lookin' at?" Rhombulus asked. Looking to his left, he saw his other hand with a baseball bat in its mouth. Frantically, Rightie tried to finish dialing the Magical High Commission. Leftie swung the bat at Rhombulus, but he leaned back at the last second, dodging the bat which instead hit Rightie in the hand-face, Leftie then spit out the bat in shock. In response, Rhombulus smacked both of his hands against various crystals. Running across the room, punching things in order to hurt his snake hands, Rhombulus jumped into the air and ground pounded his snake hands, trapping under his butt. Rightie managed to free itself and started punching Rhombulus in the face, at which point he crystallised it. Pulling leftie out from under his butt, he crystallised it as well.

There is an old saying known throughout the universe. It goes, 'When a snorfeuli fights his own body parts, the only one who loses is himself'. Scholars and philosophers have argued for centuries about the meaning of the proverb, not helping matters is the fact that no one knows what the hell a snorfeuli is. However, for Rhombulus, it took on a very literal meaning right now. Panting heavily, despite having no mouth to breath with, panic started to set in fast. With both his hands trapped in crystal, Rhombulus was officially alone on this. He looked up at the crystallised chancellor and started backing away, only to bump into the crystal containing Star. He gave a startled cry and turned around.

" **You!** " Rhombulus said accusingly upon seeing who he ran into, "I know you're the source! I-I can feel it!"

Raising his gem-encased hands to his head, Rhombulus fired a ray of magic at the crystal, which began to melt. Once Star's head was freed, he stopped. The princess blinked in confusion, uncertain of what was going on. She was somewhere new, with no memory of how she got there, and she couldn't move her body from the neck down. She turned her attention to Rhombulus upon noticing him.

"Why did you cause the fritz!" Rhombulus yelled.

Star's mind came to a screeching halt, and every other thought ceased as she focused on the words Rhombulus had just said. The fritz, was it the same fritz that the vampire mentioned? They both seemed to think she had something to do with it. Did this jewel headed man work for that vampire!? With that thought, Star went into full panic mode. She started screaming and thrashing about wildly. However, since only her head and a single hand weren't encased in crystal, the thrashing didn't do much. Well, it managed to tip over the crystal, but that only resulted in her smacking her head against the floor. In a last desperate move, Star tried to dip down. She had only done it once so far, but she had to do something. However, her attempt at wandless magic was cut short by Rhombulus recrystallising her.

"I really just can't take any more yelling today." He tiredly said, completely unaware that Star had tried to use magic against him. With a sigh, set her crystal upright, and fired another ray at the crystal, melting it again. He tried to explain who he was to Star, but the princess cut him off before he could get a single word out.

"I don't know!" Star yelled, having given up on trying to dip down after he last attempt was cut short, "I don't know anything about the fritz or the crystal! Please don't hurt me!"

"Wha- Hold on, I'm not gonna hurt you!" Rhombulus hastily said.

"Don't take me to that vampire!" Star said desperately.

"Vampire!? What vampire?!" Rhombulus asked, completely confused.

"Oh, um. Wait, you mean you aren't working for that really powerful vampire?" Star asked. In hindsight, she might have jumped to conclusions pretty quickly. But, in her defense, she was in a very stressful situation right now, was far too tired to think rationally, and just had some recent trauma brought up.

"No! Of course not! I would never work with vampires!" Rhombulus said, rather offended by the insinuation. He then quickly mumbled, "Alucard doesn't count."

"I'm sorry what was that?" Star asked, not quite being able to make out what he said.

"Uh, it doesn't matter! I'm the one asking the questions here! Why are you causing the fritz?" Rhombulus demanded.

"I don't even know what that is! I just told you that!" Star shot back, starting to get angry.

"Don't play dumb with me! The fritz! You know, the thing that's been draining the power of magic from the universe." Rhombulus walked over to a light switch on the wall and flicked it, resulting in nothing happening, "See? Crystal orbs are down. And then there's the green hole over there."

Rhombulus casually gestured to a large hole in the roof which showed the starry night sky above. However, that was not the hole he was referring to. No, the hole was talking about was the massive green vortex in the sky above.

"Yeah, that part definitely looks broken." Star admitted, staring apprehensively at the swirling tear in space time.

"Heck, look at the crystal I trapped your friend in! He's already starting to break out of it." Rhombulus pointed at Marco's crystal, and another cracked appeared in it as if prompted, "My stuff used to be hard as diamonds. Now it's like, I don't know, rock candy or something."

"And you think this is my fault!? That's crazy!" Star yelled.

"You have to be the source! My gut told me so!" Rhombulus yelled.

"Your gut!? That's the dumbest thing I've heard." Star paused and thought for a second, "Okay, maybe not _the_ dumbest, but it's still pretty stupid."

"It's not stupid!" Rhombulus said defensively, then gestured around the room, "You see all these guys? My gut told me they were evil, so I crystallised them."

As Rhombulus talked, he walked around to some of the various prisoners trapped in crystal.

"There's Zedlord, who blew up an entire planet. Astrobell and the black hole she created. Stopped that one just in time. Here's Shaft, he tried to resurrect Draaa-" Rhombulus trailed off as he eyed Star. Eventually he moved away from the old man clad in purple and red robes, "Uh, let's move on from him. Oh, here's pizza delivery guy. Delivered the pizza to the wrong address."

"Whoa whoa whoa, wait. So you're just some crazed psycho who goes around trapping people in crystal and kidnapping them cause your gut says they're evil?" Star said.

"What? No!This is my _job_! I find the source of evil, and I encase it in crystal forever." Rhombulus said, folding his arms defiantly.

"Your job? Who even are you!?" Star yelled.

"W-why, I'm Rhombulus! I'm the enforcer of the Magical High Commission! It's my job to stop the bad guys!" Rhombulus said.

"Wait, the Magic High Commision? You mean you work with my mom!?" Star asked.

"Um, yes. I don't know if that's super important right now or-" Rhombulus started to say.

"Does she know about this?! Is she... Is she okay with crystallising me?" Star asked, sounding upset as she stared at the ground.

"Uh, well. Technically, the rest of the Commission doesn't really know about this." Rhombulus admitted. He didn't want to upset her, even if she might be evil. He pointed at the crystal containing the chancellor, "Me and Lekmet are the only ones who know."

"Wait, that old goat man is a member of the High Commission? Why did you crystallise him then?" Star asked.

"Uh, well-" Rhombulus mumbled hesitantly.

"Or my friend Marco? What did he do exactly?" Star pressed.

"I mean, he kind of attacked me." Rhombulus said, rubbing the crack on his head.

"Duh, you trapped me in a crystal. Trying to save your best friend isn't evil." Star said, "It seems like you're crystallising a lot of innocent people. And why, cause your guts says to? I think you might need to think stuff through a little more before you rely on your gut. Heck, you even crystallised your own hands! Who does that?"

"Maybe you're right... I thought I could trust you, gut!" Rhombulus raised his crystal encased hand, and then drove it into his stomach. Yelling angrily, he punched himself a few more times, before moving on the punching the walls and floor. Star winced uncomfortably at his display of anger and self harm. Rhombulus picked up a crystal chair and threw it, which smashed into the crystal containing the pizza delivery guy, shattering it. Freed, the delivery man ran off.

Once his anger was spent, Rhombulus stumbled over to the exercise equipment and sat down on a weight bench.

"I've been wrong about everything lately. The Commission thinks I'm a joke. I thought I could find the source of the fritz, my hands and I could earn the appreciation of the Magical High Commission again." Rhombulus said, though to no one in particular. While he was talking, Star struggled inside her crystal. Before long, she managed to pull her right arm free, and then slipped her left one out as well. Using her freed arms, she managed to wiggle her body loose and pulled herself out of the crystal fully. Unfortunately, her socks were still stuck inside, much to her annoyance. Too make matters worse, the crystal floor was really cold, and she had to hop quickly from foot to foot as she made her way towards Rhombulus, who was still talking, "I actually crystallized Lekmet. And I love Lekmet!"

He then broke down crying. Gemstone tears fell from his face, and Star picked up two of the jewels. They looked more like cut gems than anything natural. Using Rhombulus' reflective head as an improvised mirror, Star held the crystals up to her ears like earrings. However, she was soon brought back to the situation at hand when Rhombulus started talking again.

"I've never messed up _this_ badly before. I'm gonna be in time-out for the next ten thousand years, if they don't just kick me out of the Commission." Rhombulus said glumly.

"I didn't know you could be fired from Magic High Commission." Star said.

"It doesn't happen often, but nobody's ever crystallised the princess _and_ the High Chancellor in the same day before." Rhombulus replied, then asked in a worried voice, "You don't think they'd make me crystallise myself, do you?"

"What? No, of course not." Star assured him. In reality, she had no clue if the High Commission would crystallise him. He was one of their members, so they might go easy on him. But, she also remembered her parents constantly complaining about him -unless they were talking about a different Rhombulus- and Omnitraxus didn't have anything nice to say about him either. Star wasn't actually sure what Hekapoo's opinion on him was, but the old goat man was bound to be mad about being encased in crystal. So, they might actually jump at the opportunity to get rid of Rhombulus.

"Oh yeah? I bet Glossaryck would love it if I got stuffed in crystal for the rest of eternity." Rhombulus said.

"Ah, you don't need to worry about him. He's coming back." Star replied bitterly.

"Wha, Glossaryck's gone?" Rhombulus asked in amazement.

"Oh, uh... yeah." Star said, chuckling nervously as she remembered that she wasn't actually suppose to tell anyone that.

"Glossaryck's gone? This is amazing!" Rhombulus said, giggling. He then turned suddenly serious, " I mean, it's actually really bad" He began chuckling again, "But it's good for me." And back again to somber, "But yeah, wow. That's bad news for the universe."

"Why?" Star asked. She never knew Glossaryck as anything more than an obnoxious teacher, albeit a wise and powerful one.

"The thing about Glossaryck is he may be a jerk, but he's the most powerful, all-knowing, magic jerk in the universe." Rhombulus explained, "That's why I can never win an argument with him. I mean, I don't usually win arguments anyway, but Glossaryck especially annoying. It's like he goes of his way to make me feel stupid."

"Yeah, he's just so hard to deal with right?" Star said, recalling all the times that Glossaryck left her confused while making it clear that he had all the answers. Then she recalled all the other obnoxious things about her old teacher, and felt the need to rant about him. One memory in particular stood fresh in her mind, "I tried to _rescue_ him, but he didn't want to come back."

"You know that fancy crystal in his head? I gave it to him! But did he ever thank me? No." Rhombulus said, deciding to join Star in complaining about the old blue wizard.

"Every time we got donuts, he just sat on them." Star said, sighing in annoyance, "What a waste of perfectly good donuts."

"Um, You know, I made some donuts for a meeting yesterday, and I think there's some left over. You want any?" Rhombulus asked. It was the least he could do for her after the whole false imprisonment thing.

"I would love some." Star replied all princess-like.

Rhombulus took one of the crystals from around the room and placed on its side, using it as make-shift table. Leaving Star to wonder why they didn't already have a table. He then got two mugs and a coffee pot, both made of crystal, along with a box of donuts, and set them on the table. While Rhombulus poured some coffee into the cups, Star opened up the box to find a couple donuts, all coated in crystals. She picked one up, and oohed at it.

"You know, you shouldn't feel so down on yourself, Rhombulus. Your crystals are really pretty." Star said. She went to take a bite of the donut, and nearly chipped a tooth. Wincing, she spoke again in a pained voice, "And still pretty hard, even with the fritz." Like rock candy her ass.

"Close your eyes for a minute." Rhombulus said.

"Uh, okay." Star said, shutting her eyes. She heard a noise like a band-aid being torn off.

"Now open!" Rhombulus said. Upon opening her eyes, she saw that Rhombulus had torn one of the jewels off his nipples, and handed it to her, "Here."

"Ooh, thanks for the, um, nipple-demon." Star said, noting a small, angry, horned person trapped inside the gem.

"It's one of the evil twins. He's the villain I'm most proud of capturing. At least, I'm pretty sure this is the evil one. Either way, I want you to have it." Rhombulus said.

"Thank you, Rhombulus." Star said, taking the jewel. She was touched that he would give her something that he clearly held so dear. Once you got past the whole crystallising and kidnapping thing, he didn't seem like a bad guy. Suddenly, she remembered something, "Oh, hey. Can I ask you a question?"

"Oh, sure." Rhombulus replied.

"Earlier, when I mentioned vampires, you knew that they exist. But, my Mom thinks they're just stories, and so did I until recently. Why is that?" Star asked.

Rhombulus started sweating nervously. In truth, the reason most of the universe didn't know about Night Creatures was because the High Commission had decided to cover them up along with Dracula. They hid knowledge of all Night Creatures to make it harder to learn of the Dark Lord. It was a very logical decision, the less people who knew about Him, the less people who would become His worshipers and try to resurrect Him. And after Eclipsa it became clear that not even the Butterfly family could necessarily be trusted with information of Him. Ever since then, the High Commission was very careful to only divulge information about Dracula when they needed to.

"Uh, well, they aren't very common. So, yeah, that's probably why the Queen doesn't know about them." Rhombulus said. It was all technically true, even if he left out a lot of important information.

"But, the Butterfly family used to hunt vampires didn't we? Why isn't that more well known, or at least written in some dusty old history book?" Star asked.

"Um, that's... Hold up. You said you got attacked by a very powerful vampire? Just how strong was it?" Rhombulus asked, trying to change the subject.

"Well, he was way stronger than the other vampires I met, which were already way tougher than anything I'd ever fought before. My friend Sofía, who's a vampire hunter by the way, she fought him and lost pretty hard." Star said. She then hesitated, unsure if she wanted to admit the next part, but ultimately decided to tell him, "Also, when he showed up, I could feel how strong he was, and... It became hard to think. It kind of felt like I was going crazy, or something."

"Oh, that's bad." Rhombulus said.

"It is?!" Star asked, worried. Was that not suppose to happen? Neither Sofía or Marco seemed to be affected by the vampire like she was. So was there something wrong with Star.

"That only happens when a vampire is really, _really_ , _reeeally_ , powerful. So much Chaotic magic is clustered in their body that your brain can tell something's wrong with them and it just kind of shuts down." Rhombulus explained. Star breathed a sigh of relief, glad to know that that type of reaction was normal. Rhombulus continued talking, "That's super bad. A vampire that powerful could cause serious trouble. We need to tell the High Commission about this!"

"What? No! No no no no! We can't let my mom find out about this! I can't keep screwing up or she'll make me go back to Mewni. I've already destroyed my wand, and lost the Magic Book of Spells. If she finds out that I got attacked by a monster that's basically evil personified on top of that, that could easily be the last straw. So you can't tell her." Star said, "Besides, you don't need to worry about the vampire. Sofía the vampire hunter is already going after him."

"Didn't you say she already lost against him?" Rhombulus asked.

"She's training to beat him." Star said. Rhombulus started to say something but Star cut him off, "Okay, look, how about this? If you don't mention the vampire or how I lost both Glossaryck and the Magic Book of Spells, then I won't tell them about the how you crystallised me."

"Okay! Deal." Rhombulus said happily, and held out his crystal encased hand. It was irresponsible, but Rhombulus had never been very responsible. Grabbing his hand, Star gave it a hearty shake, sealing the deal.

"What about the old goat man?" Star asked, looking over to where Lekmet was trapped in a crystal.

"Oh, don't worry about him. I'm the only one who can understand what he says." Rhombulus said.

"Also, can I have my socks back?" Star asked.

Once Star's socks had been decrystallised and were placed back on her feet, Rhombulus cut open a portal back to earth. Picking up Marco's crystal, Star carried it to towards the portal, all while placing the weight entirely on her back, the absolute worst possible way she could have carried it. She hopped through the portal, landing in the kitchen, and set the very heavy crystal down with a grunt. By now, it was dawn, and the early morning light shown through the kitchen windows. Much like she predicted earlier, Star hadn't gotten any sleep today, though for very different reasons than she originally expected. Rhombulus stuck his head out of the portal.

"Hey, thank you princess." He said.

"No problem. You're doing me a favor too." Star said. Rhombulus started to duck back into the portal, but Star called out to him, "Wa-wa-wa-wait! You still gotta unfreeze him." She said, pointing to Marco. Though, from the state of his crystal, now even more badly cracked than before, it looked like it wouldn't hold much longer anyway.

Still, Rhombulus fired a ray of magic from his head, and the crystal began to melt. Just as it finished melting, Rhombulus pulled his head back through the portal, which closed behind him. Unfortunately for Marco, Star had set his crystal upside down, and being unfrozen leaves the person stunned for a brief moment afterwards. As a result, Marco wound up falling on his head when the crystal melted, before the rest of his body hit the kitchen floor.

"Good morning, Marco." Star said cheerfully as she leaned over him and waved.

"Star?! What happened!?" Marco asked, bolting upright and looking around, "You were in this ice cube, and there was this big guy with a big square head, and I tried to punch him but I think I might have broken my hand doing so-"

At that point, Star cut Marco off by shoving a spoonful of cereal in his mouth. The _Sugar Seeds_ that had been spilled earlier were still lying on the floor, and Star scooped up some with the spoon that was also still lying on the floor. She gave a short laugh as Marco chewed the cereal in confusion.

"What a funny dream, Marco." Star said, as she really didn't want to have to explain what just happened to him right now.

After a moment of chewing, Marco spit out the cereal in disgust.

"Were these on the _floor_?" He asked, glaring at Star.

-000-

The portal closed behind Rhombulus and he looked down at his snake hands, still encased in crystal. Taking a deep breath, he began melting the crystals they were trapped in. As soon as they were free and realised what was happening both hands began yelling at him. Rhombulus tried to get them to calm down so he could explain what happened with Star, but they kept interrupting him every time he tried to speak. Before long, Rhombulus lost his temper and started yelling back at them as well. All three of them were shouting at the same time, none able to make out what the other two were saying. Eventually, Rhombulus was able to make himself heard.

" **Be quiet and let me explain!** " He yelled louder than his hands.

"Explain what? We were there when it happened!" Rightie said.

"Stuff happened after I crystallised you guys." Rhombulus said.

"What, did you manage to screw up even more?" Leftie scoffed.

"No! In fact, everything's taken care of. We don't have to worry about getting in trouble anymore!" Rhombulus said.

"Oh my God! You killed everyone involved so no one will ever find out, didn't you!?" Leftie said with a horrified expression.

"Wha- **No!** Why would you even think that!?" Rhombulus said, equally as horrified as his hand, "I just talked to the princess. And she agreed to not tell anyone about this."

"How the heck did you do to get her to do that?" Rightie asked.

"That's actually what I need to talk to you two about. You see, the princess had a run in with... a vampire." Rhombulus whispered the last part, despite them being alone.

"Oh, that's not good." Leftie said.

"Yeah, she's not suppose to know about those." Rightie added.

"Don't worry, she doesn't anyone to find out about it. In fact, I promised to not tell anyone about the vampire as long as she doesn't tell anyone about how I crystallised her." Rhombulus said.

"Oh, so everything's taken then." Leftie said.

"Uh, not quite. See, it sounds like the vampire she ran into was really strong. Not the kind of thing we can't let run free." Rhombulus said, "But, since we promised to not tell the rest of the High Commission about it, we're gonna have to track the vampire down on our own."

"Great, so we have to hunt a powerful vampire in secret on top of finding the source of the fritz." Rightie sighed.

"Eh, it's not like we were making much progress on the fritz thing anyway. Now hunting down Night Creatures, that's something we're good at." Leftie said.

"So, you're both on board with this then?" Rhombulus asked hopefully.

"Heck yeah we are! We don't have to worry about getting in trouble and we get to fight a vampire!" Leftie said excitedly.

"It's been so long since we got to kill one." Rightie said.

"Alright, great!" Rhombulus said, happy that things were finally going well for him. Then he looked over to where he chancellor was crystallised and spoke with less enthusiasm, "Now we just gotta unfreeze Lekmet."

"Oh yeah." Leftie said, not looking forward to how the old goat would respond, "He's gonna be _so_ mad."

"He'll never let us forget this." Rightie said.

"Yeah... Well, let's get this over with." Rhombulus sighed and began to melt the chancellor's crystal.

* * *

 **This chapter was a bit too similar to the original episode than I would have liked, even if I changed and added some stuff here and there. But it's an important episode to cover.**

 **Also, it might be a little while until I upload again, since I haven't fully figured out what's going to happen in the next chapter. I have some ideas, but the actual plot isn't really done yet.**

 **I don't really have much else to say here, it was a short chapter.**

 _ **Guest**_ ** _Review_ : ****Esos juegos no aparecerán en esta historia ya que no me gustaron esos juegos y están completamente separados de los juegos principales de Castlevania. También, lo siento si esta traducción es mala, tuve que usar Google Translate.**

 **Translation:** **Those games (Lords of Shadow) will not appear in this story since I didn't like those games and they are completely separate from the main Castlevania games. Also, I'm sorry if this translation is bad, I had to use Google Translate.**


	10. Chapter 10: Oncoming Dread

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or** **Castlevania**

* * *

Right now, Marco was suppose to be doing homework. He was going out with his friends in a few hours and needed to finish up his schoolwork before he left. And if you were to simply peeked into his room, it certainly looked like that was what he was doing. But he had been staring at the same page of his history textbook for the past hour now. He was distracted, lost in his thoughts instead of focusing on his school. Constantly, his thoughts turned back to his battle with Abbadon. A sudden tearing noise brought him back to the present. Turning around, he saw an ominous red portal in the middle of his bedroom. As Marco expected, Hekapoo stepped out of the portal.

"Hey, I got your message. You said it was urgent?" She said.

"Yes it is urgent, so why did it take you three days to show up?" Marco asked, annoyed. He had been sure to call Hekapoo as soon as he got back from the underworld. Unfortunately, she hadn't answered, so he left her a voicemail telling her that they need to talk as soon as possible.

"Hey, I've been busy. Some guy stole prince Kelpbottom's scissors and went of a joyride through the universe with them. I've been spending the last four days closing up portals and tracking him down." Hekapoo said.

"Fine, sorry. It's just, something bad happened." Marco said with some reluctance.

"What?" Hekapoo asked, worried. After a moment, Marco gave a sigh.

"A Night Creature found out about my powers." He responded at last.

"...Crap." Was the only reply Hekapoo had.

"And they also know my name." Marco hesitantly added.

"What, did you give them your social security number too?" Hekapoo asked sarcastically as she rubbed her temples in frustration, "Alright, we need to track them down. Alright, what can you tell me about 'em?"

"He said his name was Abaddon, if that helps." Marco said.

"... _Shit_." Hekapoo said, collapsing onto Marco's bed. She dragged her hands across her face his a groan, "So, the _most powerful_ demon in hell knows that you have dark magic powers. I can't fight Abaddon, he'd kill me! In fact, how the hell are you still alive?"

"He got freaked out by my powers and ran. Before that, he wasn't fighting seriously, though was still kicking my ass." Marco admitted. He had hoped that with Hekapoo's help they might be able to take on the demon together, but that didn't sound likely, "What about Arikado? Could he win?"

"Maybe, probably. But Arikado isn't here, and contacting him is next to impossible." Hekapoo said with a sigh, "Still it's our only real option. We just have to pray the demon doesn't realise what your powers actually are any time soon."

"Isn't there anything we can do sooner?" Marco asked, since he really wasn't fond of the idea of sitting around and waiting God knows how long for Arikado to show up.

"No, there really isn't, not unless we want to go to the rest of High Commission for help." Hekapoo said, "Also, what do you mean by 'we'? You're not getting involved next time."

"WHAT!?" Marco yelled in shock.

"You heard me. You're not going anywhere near Abaddon again. You could have easily been killed, and next time you might not be so lucky." Hekapoo said.

"I've fought things just as strong as him before!" Marco said.

"Yeah, when you were older, way tougher, and armed with powerful magic weapons!" Hekapoo replied, raising her voice.

"I can handle myself." Marco said.

"This isn't about whether you can handle yourself. This is about going after one of the strongest Night Creatures in existence!" Hekapoo said, "You know you can't fight Abaddon."

"What am I suppose to do then!? Nothing and just wait for Arikado?" Marco asked.

"That's the only thing we can do!" Hekapoo yelled.

"Do you not realise how bad this is?! A Night Creature knows about my powers!" Marco shouted back.

"Of course understand how bad this is! I understand it better than you do! I don't want to wait for Arikado, but for the millionth time, it's our only option!" Hekapoo replied.

"No it isn't! I'm getting stronger. If I increase my training regime and grab the Valmanway from your dimension, then in a couple weeks I might be strong enough to-"

" **No!** You've seen how strong Abaddon is, so why are you so set on fighting him?! Do you want to die!?" Hekapoo snapped her mouth close as she realised what she just said. Beside her, Marco fell silent and looked away. After a moment, Hekapoo slowly spoke, "Marco, I'm sorry, I... Look, I know how bad this is, and I get that you want to do something about it. But if we just rush into this, you could get, hurt. And that won't help anyone. Imagine how your parents would feel if something happened to you, or imagine how Star would feel. I would certainly be unhappy if that happened. So please, just wait for Arikado to show up, then we can figure out what to do next."

Marco didn't speak at first. Then he took a deep breath and turned to face Hekapoo.

"Okay. I won't go after Abaddon. I promise." Marco said. Hekapoo studied his face, trying to determine if he was lying. To do so, she wound up getting very close to him. Marco leaned back slightly, but otherwise didn't move, and tried not to focus on just how close her face was to his own. Eventually, she decided he was telling the truth and moved back.

"Okay, good." Hekapoo said, smiling softly.

"H-Poo, I'm sorry-" Marco tried to speak but was cut off.

"Dude, it's fine. You don't need to apologise." Hekapoo said.

"You don't even know what I was going to apologise for." Marco pointed out. And to be completely honest, he hadn't been completely sure what he was apologising for when he started either. He had screwed up so many things lately. Hell, he counted at least four screw-ups in this past conversation alone.

"Whatever it was, there's a pretty good chance it's not something you need to say sorry for." Hekapoo said.

"Thanks." Marco said, "I probably shouldn't keep you any longer. You probably have a lot of stuff to do."

"Actually, I can stay a bit longer. Besides, I promised Arikado that I'd keep an eye on you, and really... haven't." Hekapoo said, "I mean, you've been back on earth for a like month now, I'm sure you have some stuff to tell me."

"Are you sure? You aren't busy or anything?" Marco asked.

"I'm sure, and I can always make a clone if I need to be somewhere fast." Hekapoo said.

"Okay, let's see..." Marco sat back down in his chair, and began recounting what had happened to him recently.

-000-

In the days of yore, there were hundreds of Quest Buys scattered throughout the universe, it was a great franchise, but now there were but two left. As of late, wages across the dimensions had stagnated, while costs of living continued to increase, and the result was that less and less people chose to shop at such stores. Most of the things sold there were not things that most people needed, and the items they did want were to hard to find the labyrinthine shopping center and could be easily bought from local businesses instead. Not helping matters was the fact that Quest Buy had truly terrible customer service, with the employees preferring to do literally anything except their job.

Yet despite this, Quest Buy had quite a few people in the store today, though most weren't here to do shopping. An angry mob had gathered in the store, all yelling at the sloth employees who were desperately trying to explain the store policy to them. Most of the people who had actually come to shop took one look at the furious crowds and promptly left.

A portal to earth opened in the middle of Quest Buy. From it stepped Janna, who dragged a very tired Star by her arm through as well. After them came Jackie. The skater girl had been to very few dimensions besides her own and marveled at the massive store, all while still looking as cool as ever. Lastly, Marco exited the portal, more than a little annoyed to be back at Quest Buy so soon after his last visit.

"Janna, remind me why we're here again." He asked. This shopping trip had been at her insistence.

"I can't remind of something you never learned in the first place." Janna said.

"Then, tell me why we're here." Marco said, almost growling.

"My magic's been acting up, and none of the books that Sofía gave me are really helping. So, I figured I might find something here that'll help." Janna said.

"Okay, but why did we have to come _here_?" Marco asked.

"Because I can't exactly find what I'm looking for a Walmart." Janna said.

"Are you sure we should be looking here though? These don't exactly look like happy customers." Jackie said, pointing towards the yelling crowds.

"What is going on?" Marco asked, finally taking notice of the mob. When he last visited Quest Buy only a few days ago, it hadn't been like this. There had been some angry customers, but not nearly this many.

A large werebear had cornered a sloth employee and held a staff up while shouting, "I bought this Rod of Wonder and it stopped working after two days! I want my money back!"

"You think that's bad? My Pegasus Boots broke before I even used them. They only work half the time." A pale-skinned woman clad in furs stomped over to the pair. Shortly after she arrived, a cyborg skeleton walked up as well.

"This elven sword is suppose to glow like a torch in the presence of orcs. I've seen half dead fireflies that shine brighter than it!" The mechanical undead yelled in a raspy voice.

"I'm sorry, but that's not my department. You need to go to customer serv-" The sloth was cut off by the werebear lifting him into the air by his collar.

"If I don't get a refund in the next _five_ minutes, I'm shoving this useless stick up. Your. ASS!" The beast screamed.

"Security! Securi-" The sloth's cries for help were cut short by the werebear throwing him to the ground. It promptly began beating the employee with the rod, and the barbarian woman and the skeleton both started kicking the sloth as well. Before long, other angry shoppers joined in the assault on the hapless retail worker.

"We should- we should probably go." Marco said, backing away from the fight that just broke out. Jackie followed after him, eager to get away from the violence. It was giving her flashbacks to when she got a job bagging groceries over the summer. Specifically, she was reminded of the incident on aisle six, after which she had been forced to sign a legal document agreeing to never speak about the incident on aisle six.

"Hang on, I gotta see this." Janna said. Taking out her phone, she began recording as the werebear attempted to make good on his earlier promise.

"Janna!" Marco yelled, ducking as a different sloth employee soared through the air over his head. The fight started by the werebear had spread to the rest of the angry mob, who began attacking every Quest Buy employee in sight.

"Ugh, fine." Janna groaned as she put away her phone. She grabbed Star by the arm, the princess had nearly fallen asleep standing up, "Come on, sleeping beauty." And the group promptly took off.

"So, now where to?" Jackie asked once they put some distance between themselves and the fighting.

"Book department, let's see if they have anything on ice magic." Janna said, walking past them while still dragging Star around by the arm.

"That's the wrong way." Marco said. Stopping, Janna turned around to see Marco pointing to his left, "The books are over that way."

"How would you know?" Janna asked.

"Because apparently, I'm the only person in the multiverse that can read Quest Buy's signs." Marco said, jerking his thumb towards an stone information kiosk. Slumped up against the kiosk was a skeleton, clutching an ancient tome of symbols in one hand and a dagger in the other, which it had used to carve the words, 'MoRtalS wEre NoT meaNt to kNOw' into the base of the kiosk.

"Well, that's not overdramatic at all." Janna said, staring at the skeleton.

"Come on, I don't want to spend any more time at Quest Buy than I have to." Marco said, walking in the direction of the book section.

The group made their way through the giant maze that was Quest Buy. Even if with Marco acting as guide, it was still a long trip. At several points, they had to make detours, usually to avoid one of fights that had broken out between shopper and store worker. Away from angry mobs however, the store seemed practically deserted. Eventually though, they arrived at the part of the store where they kept the books. It was a only single bookshelf, with books on both sides. However, the bookcase also seemed to stretch on for over a thousand feet. Janna looked between both sides of the bookcase.

"We should split up. Star and I will search the right side." Janna said, "And you two can search the left."

"Is splitting up really a good idea?" Jackie asked.

"What? It's not like we can get lost searching a single bookcase." Janna said.

"You say that, but you never know with this place." Marco sulked.

"Quit your worrying. Look at it this way, if we do this we'll be done and out of here sooner." Janna said.

"Okay, that does make your idea sound more appealing." Marco admitted, "But, if anything happens, call me. Bizarrely, our phones somehow work here."

With that, the group split and began searching the bookcase. Unfortunately, it was organised not by subject or even title, either of which could have potentially helped in their search, but rather by the color of the their spines and the levels of radiation each book gave off. As a result, they had to check every single book to see if it had anything to do with ice magic. Janna's search progressed significantly slower than Marco and Jackie's, mainly because Star wasn't really doing much to help. The poor girl was dead on her feet and felt very close to collapsing. At current, she couldn't do much more than stand still and stare into space.

As Janna searched through the books, one of them caught her eye. While it wasn't what she had come to Quest Buy to find, it was definitely of interest. Grabbing the book off the shelf, she walked over to where Star was standing and lightly shook the princess' by the shoulder to get her attention.

"Hey, Star. Earth to Star." Janna said. As she spoke, she went from shaking Star to squishing her cheeks, "Come on, wake up you lazy bum."

"Huh, what?" Star finally replied through squished cheeks, blinking slowly.

"You're really out of it. Did you not sleep well or something?"Janna asked while she moved her hands away.

"I didn't sleep at all last night." Star said with a yawn. She thought back to her encounter with Rhombulus last night which had prevented her from getting any rest. Not that she probably would have gotten any sleep either way, but it certainly didn't help, "Did you find whatever it was you looking for?"

"No, but I did find something else cool. Check it out." Janna said with a wicked grin and held up the book she grabbed for Star to read.

The princess stared dully at the copy of ' _How to Tell if Someone Can See the Future_ '.

"Oh, neat." Star said with a small, tired smile. Janna frowned, that wasn't the reaction she had been expecting. Of course, it was possible that Star was too exhausted to make the connection.

"Hey, wouldn't it be pretty crazy if someone we knew was psychic? Like, Marco?" Janna asked, dropping any attempts at subtly. She had barely learned anything about what was going on him despite promising Jackie to look into, (mostly because she had been too preoccupied learning magic) and she wasn't going to let this opportunity slip through her fingers.

"Pfft, no that's stupid." Star said with short laugh.

"Y-yeah, I guess it is." Janna said in a frustrated voice. Well, there went her theory. Still she wasn't completely without leads, she just needed to find some info on who this Hekapoo person was. Also, she was keeping the book, just because.

-000-

"I think I found something." Jackie said, pulling a book off the shelf. Marco quickly walked over to her and looked at the tome she was holding. Looking at its title, _Ice Magic for Beginners_ he shook his head, having recognised the grimoire.

"No, Janna already has that one." Marco said, before turning back to the bookcase and resuming his search.

"Dang it." Jackie said with a groan, and put the book back on the shelf.

They had been searching for little over an hour now and hadn't found anything useful. _Ice Magic for Beginners_ had been the first book they came across that was even related to their search in any way, well of the books they could read at least. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the books were in various bizarre alien languages, and also Dutch for some reason. It was entirely possible that they had already found a tome covering the exact topic they were looking for, but they simply couldn't read it.

"You know, it's been a while since we've hung out." Jackie said as they browsed the shelves.

"Oh, um, sorry. A lot's been going on lately." Marco said, the guilt he felt around Jackie, which he had mostly forgotten about during their search, returned in full force.

"Like what?" Jackie asked, with out a hint of sarcasm or acquisition.

"Uh, well, I went to Siberia and got shot at by an old Soviet war machine." Marco said.

"I'm definitely going to need to hear more about that one." Jackie replied.

"I also stopped a coup in the underworld." Marco said.

"The underworld? Isn't that where Star's crazy ex-boyfriend is from?" Jackie asked.

"He's gotten a lot better, Tom's actually a pretty cool guy now." Marco responded, "What about you, what's been going on?"

"Eh, not much. Just normal, boring stuff." Jackie said.

"Considering all the crazy stuff I go through, normal and boring sounds like a nice change of pace." Marco said, and Jackie gave a small smile.

"Well, I haven't been able to skateboard recently, one of the wheels on my skateboard got messed up, so I need to get that fixed-" Jackie trailed off as she spotted a book on one of the higher shelves.

Along the spine of the green and yellow tome was its title, ' _Why Isn't My Ice Magic Working?_ '. It was exactly the book they were looking for, and she reached up to pull it off the shelf. A second after she grabbed it, another hand shot out and grabbed the same book. Jackie almost let go of the book out of surprise and whipped her head to her left. Standing there was a woman she hadn't noticed until now. Exactly how she missed a six and a half foot tall reptile woman in a purple jumpsuit was mystery to her. The lizard lady pulled the book off the shelf even as Jackie was still holding it.

"Can you let go?" The woman asked, glaring at Jackie.

"Um, I actually had it first, and my friend was looking for this book." Jackie responded.

"Oh, I'm sorry." The lizard lady said.

She then yanked the book out of Jackie's hand with enough force to cause the skater girl to stumble forward. As she did, the lizard lady kneed her in the stomach. Jackie fell to the ground, struggling to breathe.

"Jackie!" Marco yelled. He started running toward them, but the woman grabbed another book off the shelf and hurled it at him. Marco promptly smacked it out of the air before it hit him, but the reptile lady used the distraction to leap away, bounding high into the air and landing in the next aisle over. Ignoring her, Marco instead ran over to Jackie who pushed herself up onto her hands and knees, "Are you okay!?"

"Y-yeah." She said weakly as Marco helped her to her feet, "Come on, we gotta go after her!"

"Wait, are you sure? You could get hurt again." Marco said.

"I'll be fine. Hurry, before she gets away." Jackie said, pushing off of Marco and running towards the nearest break in the shelves, and Marco followed after her. They turned a corner and found themselves in the next aisle, where the woman was calmly walking in their direction with the tome tucked under her left arm. Once she noticed them, she stopped and scowled.

"Persistent little buggers, aren't you?" She growled at them.

"Hand over the book." Jackie said.

"No, I don't think I will." The woman replied. With that, she charged at Jackie, winding her fist back to punch the teenager. She threw the punch, but before it could connect Marco grabbed her arm and hurled the lizard lady away. Flying through the air, she slammed into a nearby wall, but instead of falling to the ground afterwards she latched onto the wall with her clawed feet. The woman jumped off the wall, landing next to a flight of stairs leading up to another floor. Turning around, she shot a victorious grin at the teenagers, before running up the steps.

"Hey! Get back here!" Jackie yelled and both she and Marco took off running towards the stairs.

Once they reached the next floor, both of them stopped and scanned their surroundings. Unfortunately, the woman they were chasing was nowhere to be seen. Jackie let out an annoyed growl at the fact that she escaped. A noise behind her caught the skater girl's attention, and she turned around to see a shelf falling over towards them. Jackie dived out of the way, while Marco dashed backwards, just as the heavy shelf crashed to the ground where they had been standing. On the other side of where it stood was the lizard lady, her smug smile replaced with a frown upon seeing that they hadn't been crushed.

Not willing to let her run away again, Marco leaped forward and tackled the woman. The two flew backwards and crashed into another shelf. The products sitting on it were knocked over and fell to the ground from the impact. Frantically, the woman struggled against Marco but he kept her pinned against the shelf, his strength surpassing hers.

"I'm starting to get really mad! Just hand over the book!" Marco said.

"Okay, okay! It's yours, take it." The woman said fearfully.

Slowly, she held up the book, her arm trembling as she did so. Marco let his hold on her loosen and he moved to grab the tome. When he did, the woman snatched an object, a deku nut, off the shelf behind her with her other arm. She squeezed her eyes closed and threw the nut to the floor, and it exploded in a blinding light. Marco let go of the woman and stumbled backwards, disoriented by the bright flash. Though he couldn't see, in less than a second he regained his composure and threw a punch at the lizard lady. However, she managed to dive the side before he did so, his attack destroying the shelf instead. The woman ran as fast as she possibly could, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and Marco while he was still blinded.

Rubbing his eyes and blinking, Marco's vision returned to him. He looked up and saw the woman about twenty yards away. Suddenly, she stopped running, and turned around to look at him. Then, Jackie dashed past Marco chasing after the woman, and Marco quickly followed. Upon seeing them coming towards her, the lizard lady turned back around and resumed her flight.

Something about this whole thing felt off to Marco. Losing someone in the enormous maze of Quest Buy shouldn't be hard, especially since the woman could put large amounts of distance between herself and them with ease. She could have easily escaped from them at multiple points now. If she had continued jumping between aisles after she first got the book, or if she hadn't stayed behind to try to crush them with a shelf after running up the stair she would have been long gone by now. But what truly made him suspicious was how she stopped running and didn't resume until after they started chasing her again. It's like she wanted them to follow her.

Ahead of them, the lizard lady turned a corner and they followed after her. However, despite rounding the corner only a few seconds after the woman, she was nowhere to be seen. There were in a large open area a about the size of a football field, and all about it were catapults and trebuchets on display. Jackie whipped her head about frantically, looking for the woman. While Marco carefully scanned the area, now more sure than ever that they were being lead into some sort of trap.

" _Graah_ , she got away." Jackie said, frustrated.

In the far distance, on the other side of the open area, Marco spotted a glint of reflected light. Suddenly, he tackled Jackie to the ground, just as a gunshot rang out and a bullet zoomed past where they had been standing.

-000-

The Lerajie stared down the scope of her rifle, watching as the two teens took cover behind a trebuchet. With a smile, she ejected the empty cartridge and took aim again. While the boy had managed to avoid her first shot, she had no plans on missing again. It didn't matter that they were hidden behind a large seige engine, it didn't matter that she couldn't even see them. As long as they were in range of her rifle, she _would_ hit them. Calculating the trajectory her bullet, she made small, precise correction to the gun's angle and pulled the trigger.

-000-

Shielded by the large wooden trebuchet, both teens stopped to catch their breath. Well, Marco was catching his breath, Jackie seemed closer to hyperventilating. Forcing her breathing to slow, she turned to Marco.

"Did- did she just try to shoot us?!" Jackie asked, trying to stay calm, "Like, with a gun?"

"Yeah, a sniper rifle, I think." Marco said, "This is not good."

"She's trying to kill us. Over a book!" Jackie said, unable to keep the panic out of her voice, "This is completely insane!"

"Actually this is surprisingly pretty normal." Marco said, causing him realise just how messed up his life actually was even before his time in Hekapoo's dimension. However, he also realised that probably wasn't terribly comforting, "Um, what I'm trying to say is we're gonna get out of this mess."

Feeling utterly exhausted, Jackie slumped up against the trebuchet. For the most part, she was just a normal schoolgirl. Unlike Star and Marco, Jackie had only been in life and death situations a handful of times before now, and she wasn't really sure what to do. Plus, of the few monsters that she had met before none of them had had firearms.

Slowly, Marco peeked his head out from behind the siege engine. Looking about, he searched for any sign of where the sniper might be, but didn't see anything. Less than a second after he peeked out, another gunshot sounded across the area, and he could faintly make out the sight of a muzzle flash in the distance. Immediately, Marco withdrew behind the cover of the trebuchet. However it did him no good as a bullet hit him in the back.

With a yell of pain, Marco collapsed to his knees. A large blood splatter painted the wood of the trebuchet in front of him, and Marco quickly put his hands over the wound in his stomach and applied pressure to keep himself from loosing to much blood. It seemed that luck was on his side, as the bullet had missed all his vital organs when it went through his body.

"Marco!" Jackie screamed, rushing over to him. When she got to him, she found herself at a complete loss of what to do, and her fear and panic grew. There was so much blood, was there suppose to be that much blood when someone got shot? Nausea started to mix with the fear and panic, and she began to feel disoriented.

"We've got to move." Marco said in a shaky voice as he rose to his feet. They obviously weren't safe here. How the sniper had hit him he wasn't sure. They hadn't moved, Marco saw the muzzle flash from the same spot their first shot came from. The most reasonable explanation was that there were multiple snipers. But he hadn't heard a second gunshot.

"Over there!" Jackie said, ignoring her panic and focusing on getting out of this alive, she pointed to a nearby pair of catapults that were sitting close enough to each other that they would be able to shield them from both sides, "Can you make it to there?"

"Yes. Let's go, we have to hurry!" Marco said. Jackie slung his left arm over her shoulder, although he didn't really need the support, and they took off running towards the two catapults. They were only about thirty feet away, but to the two humans the distance seemed far greater. Every step caused pain to Marco, resulting in the few seconds they had been moving to feel closer to an hour, while Jackie tried to ignore the wet warmth of her friend's lifeblood against her side. And they were painfully exposed right now, completely out in the open, an easy target for the sniper.

It didn't take long for the Lerajie to take advantage of their predicament. Though she was impressed that the boy was able to move so quickly after eating a bullet to the gut. Lining up a head shot, she fired another round. The bullet sped across the area at supersonic speeds. But Marco saw it flying towards him, and summoned forth the magic of the Chronomage's soul. Time slowed to a crawl. Despite how impressive it seemed, it wasn't a soul that Marco used very often as it didn't work on most of the stronger Night Creatures. Unlike the spell that Star had once used to freeze time, the soul didn't truly stop time, rather it only slowed time down enough that everything seemed to have stopped. This was both a blessing and a curse, since while it meant he didn't have to manually restart the Wheel of Time every time he used the soul, it also resulted in the time stop only lasting a handful of seconds. However, in spite of its limitations, the soul certainly had its uses. In front of Marco's face the bullet was frozen in midair. Moving his right hand away from his wound, he slapped the bullet to ground, before the flow of time to resumed as normal.

At the sound of the gunfire, Jackie moved forward with a sudden surge of speed, dragging Marco along with her. They managed to reach the two catapults a second later without being shot at again. Now safe, Jackie let go of Marco and he sat down, practically collapsing. He was really starting notice the blood loss. Hopefully, he would be able to rest long enough for his regeneration soul to help.

But it seemed the sniper had other plans, and another gunshot went off. As soon as Marco heard the noise, he stopped time again. Normally, stopping time after hearing the gunfire wouldn't help, since bullets typically move faster than sound. However, Marco noticed something just now, a faint noise like metal banging against metal, and he had heard that same noise just before he had been shot in the back. Looking around, he saw a bullet just a few feet above him heading directly towards his head. It was coming from an impossible angle, as there was a steel platted beam directly behind it. Marco realised now how he had been shot in the back. There weren't multiple shooters, the sniper was ricocheting their bullets. It was fortunate that they slowed downed when they ricocheted, otherwise Marco would probably be dead right now.

Moving out of the bullet's path, Marco watched as time sped back up and the bullet hit the ground harmlessly. Jackie jumped at the sound and whirled around to see the bullet hole in the ground.

"What the hell!? They can shoot us here?!" Jackie said.

"She can shoot us anywhere. She's ricocheting her bullets, it doesn't matter where we hide." Marco responded.

"Then we need to get out of here!" Jackie said. She racked her brain desperately to think of a way to escape without getting shot at. Suddenly, it came to her, "Your scissors! We can use your scissors to escape!"

"Good idea." Marco said, and smacked his forehead. He couldn't believe he hadn't thought of them sooner. Taking out his scissors from his pocket, he started to cut open a portal.

In the distance, the Lerajie growled. The boy was still alive, which meant they no doubt realised that she could ricochet bullets. Unfortunately for her, he seemed to be too fast to shot at normally, which mean that sneak attacks with her ricochets had been the best option. But now she couldn't even rely on those. She should have known better than to underestimate him given what she had been told. However, the Lerajie still had one more trick up her sleeve, one that could end this right now.

She fired the gun in rapid succession, shooting close to a dozen bullets in less than a second. Neither a normal person nor a normal rifle would be able to fire that quickly. Upon hearing what sounded like machine gun fire, Marco paused in opening a portal and immediately stopped time again. As soon as time slowed to a stop, he looked around to see bullets coming at him from all directions. Summoning several knives with his magic, he threw them at the bullets, knocking them out of the air. Once the bullets had been deflected, the knives vanished, and time returned to its normal speed. Sparks and the sound of metal clashing against metal filled the air as the bullets scattered about. Thankfully, their moment had been killed when the knives knocked them off coarse, so there was little risk of either Marco or Jackie being badly injured by them.

However, Marco hadn't been able to get every bullet. When he paused time, one had been hidden from view between two close beams of wood on the catapult, while another hadn't quite finished its journey and was still a ricochet away. In the few seconds afforded to him by the stopped time, he hadn't been able to notice them. Now that time resumed, the first flew forward, striking him in the back of his leg, just barely missing his kneecap. Momentarily stunned, the other bullet came around the corner hitting him in the shoulder. His scapula cracked and shattered as the bullet tore through his shoulder. Crumpling to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, he dropped his dimensional scissors which slid under one of the catapults, and the portal he had cut shriveled up and vanished. With a grunt of immense pain, he forced himself to rise to his feet. He stumbled towards Jackie, who seemed to be frozen in shock and horror.

"J-Jackie, run. She's clearly after me. Get out of here!" Marco said. With how things were going now, they could easily both die. But if she left, she'd be safe and he might be able to heal with the Guardian Alura Une then confront the sniper with his souls. Jackie's stared at him in consideration, before a look of determination came into her eyes.

"What!? No! I'm not leaving you behind! Why would you even suggest that?!" Jackie yelled in a tone of complete disbelief.

"Jackie, please. You have to-"

" **Look out!** "Jackie interrupted Marco's desperate pleading by tackling him to the ground. As she did, a bullet struck him in the back. The shot was intended to go straight through his heart but instead just grazed his left lung due to her tackling him.

The two hit the ground, and Jackie scrambled away from Marco to see another bloody wound in his chest. Fear crashed over her at the sight of it, but to her relief he started moving. He rolled over and struggled to push himself up, but he had taken to many injuries and lost to much blood, and only managed to get a few inches off the floor before collapsing again. Marco's senses were beginning to dull, and he found no strength left in his limbs. Looking away from him, Jackie saw the lizard woman about fifteen yards away, and pointing a smoking rifle at where Marco had been standing.

"This guy killed Blackmore?" The Lerajie said incredulously. As she spoke, she lowered her gun and started walking forward, "I mean, don't get me wrong, you were certainly a more difficult mark than most of my prey, but I just expected a bit _more_ is all." But Marco barely heard what she was saying.

Sighing, the Lerajie tried to recall her orders. _Engage the target and steadily become more and more aggressive. Once you feel that your life is in danger, fall back and report you observations. In the unlikely event that you get opportunity to eliminate the target, take it. He is no use to us if he proves so weak._

"I guess you weren't all you were cracked up to be." The hunter said, pointing her gun at Marco's prone form. Suddenly, Jackie rushed in between them, holding her arms out to try and shield Marco.

"L-Leave him alone." Jackie said, trying to sound intimidating but failing due to the obvious fear in her voice.

"You do know that could just shoot through you? Your body isn't going to block rifle fire." The Lerajie said, unimpressed.

"Why are you doing this? This can't be about the book." Jackie asked, starting to tremble slightly.

"Orders. My master gave me orders to engage that boy report back my findings and I'm here to fulfill those orders. He's caused quite the stir as of late, fighting of demons in hell and what not." The lizard woman replied. Jackie opened her mouth to say something, but the Lerajie stopped her, "No more questions. It's time to end this."

Then there was a tearing noise as a red portal appeared in the air above the Lerajie. Jackie watched the hunter leap backwards just as a red-headed woman with pale skin and horns in a orange dress fell out off the portal and stabbed a dagger into the ground where the lizard lady had been only a moment prior. While in mid leap, the Lerajie fired three shots at the newcomer. With quick swings of her daggers, Hekapoo sliced the bullets out of the air. She then dashed forwards and lept into the air after the Lerajie. Once she got close enough, Hekapoo slashed at the sniper who tried to block the strike with her rifle. The gun was cut clean in two, and Hekapoo followed up the slice by kicking the Lerajie in the stomach. Flying backwards from the kick, the hunter hit the ground and bounced along for several yards before coming to a stop. Landing on the ground, Hekapoo charged at the Lerajie, who stood up and threw the two halves of her rifle at Hekapoo. The redhead effortlessly dodged the pieces of the gun, but while she did so the Lerajie took out a pair of scissors and cut open a portal. She jumped through it and the portal promptly closed just as Hekapoo reached it. Hekapoo paused, she could easily go after her, it wouldn't be hard to track where the portal had gone to. Ultimately though, she turned around and started running to where Marco was lying on the ground.

As she approached, Jackie moved towards Marco protectively. While the red-headed woman had saved them, she didn't know who she was or if she could trust her. However, the look of concern on the redhead's face made Jackie slightly less worried.

"Marco!" Hekapoo yelled as she got close. He was lying still on the floor, a pool of blood slowly forming underneath him, ' _He can't be dead. Please God, don't let him be dead!_ '

"H-Poo..." Marco said weakly, stirring slightly at the sound of her voice, before passing fully into unconsciousness.

With a sigh of relief that Marco was still alive, Hekapoo cut open a small portal. Reaching her arm through it, Hekapoo pulled out a Super Potion. Jackied recognised the blue medicine and moved aside so that it could be used on Marco. Carefully, Hekapoo turned his body over, and gently lifted his head as she brought the Super Potion to his lips. As the life-giving concoction went down his throat, the wounds that covered his body mended and vanished completely, though he remained unconscious.

"He'll be alright now, it'll just be awhile until he wakes up." Hekapoo said, though not necessarily to Jackie, as she put a hand on Marco's forehead.

"Who are you?" Jackie asked, staring at the horned redhead.

"What, I'm not even gonna get a 'thank you'?" Hekapoo asked with a scoff.

"Oh, sorry. Thanks." Jackie said awkwardly.

"I'm just messing with you. Name's Hekapoo." The Commission member introduced herself.

"Uh, my name's Jackie." The skater said, extending a handshake that Hekapoo didn't take. After a moment, Jackie withdrew her hand, "So, you're friends with Marco?"

"Yeah, something like that. He's helped me out a bunch of times." Hekapoo said with a small smile, before turning to Jackie, "What about you? How do you know Marco?"

"I'm his girlfriend." Jackie answered.

"Oh, that's... nice." Hekapoo replied. Then several blurry copies of Hekapoo appeared next to her, before solidifying into proper clones. Jackie was caught off guard at the sudden appearance of the clones, and watched in surprise as they went over to one of the catapults and started pushing it across the floor.

"Really though, thank you. If you hadn't showed up, Marco and I'd probably be dead right now." Jackie said after a moment, breaking the silence.

"Don't worry about. This kind of stuff is pretty normal." Hekapoo responded.

"I've heard." Jackie said, unsure how to feel about the fact that her friends nearly get killed on a regular basis. Finally, the Hekapoo clones stopped shoving the catapult, and one of them bent over pick something up, while the rest disappeared. The clone started walking back towards the original Hekapoo, and as it got closer, Jackie could see it was holding Marco's dimensional scissors. The clone handed the scissors over to Hekapoo before fading away.

"Here." Hekapoo said, offering the scissors to Jackie, "Get him back home so he can rest."

"Where are you going?" Jackie asked as she took the scissors.

"I'm going after that Night Creature." Hekapoo said, walking towards the spot where the Lerajie had made the portal. It was faint, but Hekapoo could still sense where the portal lead to. With a swing of her dagger, she cut open one of her signature red portals, before turning around to look at Jackie and Marco, "Wish me luck!" She then jumped through the portal which closed shortly afterwards.

Jackie stared at pair of scissors in her hand. Now that she thought about it, she actually didn't know how to use them, she probably should have asked before Hekapoo left. It was unlikely to be too complicated, or at least she hoped it wasn't. She probably just had to cut with them while thinking of her destination. Just as she was about to try to open a portal back to Echo Creek, she suddenly remembered something important.

"Ack, Janna." Jackie said aloud. It would be bad if she left Janna and Star here. As far as she knew, Marco's scissors were the only way they could get home. Stuffing the scissors in her pocket, she carefully picked up Marco and put him on her back. Even if he seemed healed, she didn't want to jostle him.

She started walking, trying to retrace her steps back to the book section. However, she had barely started when she noticed something lying on the ground near where the sniper had been standing when Hekapoo showed up. Walking over to it, Jackie reached down and picked up the spellbook that had kicked off this whole adventure.

-000-

Within a dark castle corridor, barely illuminated by dim, blue candles, a portal opened, bathing the hallway in light. Out of the portal stumbled an exhausted Lerajie, kicking up a thick layer of dust on the ground as she walked over to the wall to rest against it. The portal closed, and the corridor went dark once again while the hunter gasped for breath. It had taken over half and hour, and she had to visit at least seventy different dimensions, but she was finally convinced that she managed to ditch Hekapoo. By now, the Lerajie was exhausted, both physically and mentally from the stress of being chased by a Commission member. All she wanted to do was rest a little, deliver her report, and then take the rest of the day off.

"Ho ho, so it seems you managed to survive." A deep voice said. Looking up, the Lerajie saw a short flight of stairs a little ways down the hall, and standing at the top was a figure shrouded in darkness. Though she couldn't see him, she knew exactly who it was.

"What do you want?" She asked, pushing off the wall.

"Tell me, how was it that you were able to survive? It would be like a mouse attacking a cat and escaping back to its hole without losing so much as an ear." The shadowy figure said.

"I'll deliver my report to the master, and she'll tell you what you need to know." The Lerajie said, desperately hoping to get away as quickly as possible. Suddenly, the figure at the top of the stairs vanished. He didn't teleport or fade away, he didn't disturb any of the dust coating the floor, and there was no noise to be heard as he vanished.

"As I've come to expect of you. When on the hunt, you act like a cat, playing with its prey. But in the face of someone stronger, you balked and flee like the mouse, desperate to get away." The figure said, now standing directly behind her. The Lerajie whirled around, if she still had her gun she probably would have fire a ricochet to hit behind her (Not that it would have done anything). Yet there was nobody behind her, just an empty hallway.

"How curious though, that this boy defeated Blackmore and helped to stop Pazuzu's rebellion, but somehow failed to eliminate you. I suppose I shall have to see him for myself." His voice echoed throughout the hall making it impossible to tell where it was coming from.

The echoes died out, and the Lerajie waited a few minutes to see if he was going to say anything else. Once she convinced he was truly gone, she started to make her way through the castle. While it wasn't her place to come to conclusions about the information she gathered, the hunter a pretty good idea why she survived when so many more powerful night creatures had perished. It was because that human girl had been there. The boy, this Marco, seemed unwilling to use the Power of Dominance in front of other people. That was something that they could exploit.

-000-

Janna sat leaning against the bookcase. With one hand she was reading a book she had no intention of buying, while with the other she was stroking Star's hair. The princess had fallen asleep during their search, and somehow wound up using Janna's lap as a pillow. The macabre girl noticed that Star was having fitful dreams, though they seemed to stop when she started petting her head. Now, Janna found herself in the same situation that all cat owners did, trapped underneath a sleeping critter that was too adorable to wake up.

The sounds of heavy panting caught Janna's attention, and she looked up to see Jackie walking towards her while carrying Marco on her back, who, much like Star, wasn't awake. As they got closer, Janna noticed that both of them seemed to be covered in blood, though neither actually looked injured.

"Whoa, what happened to you two?" Janna asked.

"We got shot at." Jackie said between breathes.

"Yikes, where's the blood from? Cause neither look like you've got holes in ya." Janna asked.

"Correction, _I_ got shot _at_ , Marco actually got shot." Jackie replied, most of her shock from earlier replaced with exhaustion from carrying her boyfriend around the store, "He's fine now thanks to those healing potions, just unconscious."

"Same with my partner, minus the shooting bit." Janna said, patting Star, "Didn't get much shopping done as a result."

"Oh right, here." Jackie awkwardly tried to grab something she stashed away without dropping Marco. Eventually, she managed to get out the tome and handed it to Janna, "Pretty sure this is what you're looking for."

"You always come through for me." Janna said, taking the book with a grin, "Now tell me more about how you got shot at."

"Ugh, you're seriously disturbed, you know that? We almost died!" Jackie asked. Janna gave an unapologetic shrug, and the skater relented, "Alright fine. Someone tried to steal that book, so we chased her around the store. Then she started shooting at us with goddamn sniper rifle. Marco got... you know. But then some lady named Hekapoo showed up and saved us, she gave Marco a potion and then left. If you want more details, you'll have to wait until I'm less tired. And I'm not going into the gory stuff."

However, Janna stared at Jackie with a blank expression, causing the blonder skater to grow somewhat concerned.

"Did you say Hekapoo?" Janna asked, her voice serious.

"Yeah, why? She said she was a friend of Marco's." Jackie said.

"I read about her in Star's journal. And she's definitely not Marco's friend." Janna said, "She kidnapped him and Star had to rescue him from her dimension, only he didn't want to come back. Star had to convince him to come home. And right after that was when he started acting odd. Whatever's going on with Marco, this Hekapoo seems to be responsible."

Jackie stared over her shoulder at the sleeping face of her boyfriend. Now more than ever, she wondered what the hell was going.

* * *

 **I would very much like to apologise for how ungodly long this took. Unfortunately, real life got in the way, between school and getting sick multiple times while writing this, the end result was that this chapter took way longer than it should have. Seriously, it took me what? A month and a half to write this? I would have liked to have finished it before the series finale of Svtfoe, but it didn't turn out that way, much to my frustration.**

 **Speaking on the finale, just because the show is over doesn't mean I plan on stopping this fic anytime soon. After all, we haven't had a proper _Castlevania_ game in like 10 years.**

 **I never realised just how hard it is to make sure that character's power levels stay consistent before writing this fic. I have given so many works of fiction crap that they didn't** **deserve.**

 **Remember how a little while ago I said I'd try to write some chapters without fight scenes? I'm not doing a very good job at keeping my word. The fight in this chapter was intended to be much shorter, I originally imagined it as only a small part of the chapter, but it just kind of grew. Similarly, I wanted to this chapter to be mostly dialogue and character interaction, but it turns out I'm actually really bad at writing that, so that part wound up being way shorter than I would've like.**

 **Continuing** **on how I failed to meet my writing goals, this was originally suppose to be a Jackie focused chapter, but sadly it didn't really end up that way, with Marco and even the freaking Lerajie getting more focus than her. I'm going to attempt to write another chapter/storyline centred around her in the future, and hopefully I'll succeed next time.**

 **I also had Marco use two Bullet Souls at the same time in this chapter, sorry about that.**


	11. Chapter 11: Out of Time

**I do not own Star Vs. The Forces of Evil or** **Castlevania**

* * *

Miss Heinous hummed merrily to herself as she tried to strap Rasticore, or rather his arm, into the baby seat in the back of the car she was currently living in. While she attempted this, Gemini was busy refueling the beat up automobile with a canister of gasoline. The vehicle had been sitting in the same desolate dimension filled with nothing but rocks for quite awhile now, but they had recently managed to buy some gas. He looked up from his task to shoot a concerned glance at Miss Heinous as she finally managed to secure the lizard arm in the baby seat.

"Um, milady? Are you certain this is wise?" Gemini asked as he set down the empty canister.

"What do you mean!?" Heinous shot back, sounding offended that he would ask. Her face then took on a rather unhinged look, "Today is the day we finally get our revenge on that princess!"

"But, are you certain we can trust this man? I can't find any reviews for him online. To be honest I don't even think he's really an assassin." Gemini voiced his concerns.

"All that matters is he offered to help us _destroy_ Princess Marco. He could be pole-dancer for all I care." Heinous said.

"He certainly dresses like one." Gemini grumbled under his breath.

"And you saw his power." Heinous said, gesturing towards what had once been a large boulder, but was now simply a pile of rubble, "That revolutionist will be completely eviscerated!"

"But why would he want to help us? What does he get out of it? It's not like we're paying him." Gemini pointed out.

"A good thing too. We barely had enough money to afford both gasoline and my perfume." Heinous said.

"I'm just saying, I think all this is a touch suspect." Gemini said.

"Keep your thoughts to yourself then." Heinous snapped, "We have to meet up with him when we get there, and I will not let you makes us late! Now then, is the car ready to go?"

"Yes, milady." Gemini sighed, knowing that he wasn't going to change Miss Heinous' mind. After revving up the dimensional chainsaw strapped to the hood of the car, he quickly climbed into the driver's seat.

"Excellent. Next stop, Princess Marco's funeral!" Heinous cackled as she buckled into the passenger seat.

"Isn't the person usually dead for a while before the funeral is held?" Gemini asked.

"Shut your mouth and drive you obnoxious oaf!" Heinous yelled.

Less then five minutes a later, a portal opened in Echo Creek, directly in front of the Diaz house. Well, almost directly in front of it. Unfortunately, the dimensional chainsaw wasn't nearly as accurate as a pair of dimensional scissors, so they were a little off target. To be precise, they were about forty feet off target. Vertically.

After a short fall, the car landed atop another, thankfully empty, car, crushing it completely. The already rocky start to this mission only continued to get worse.

"Gemini, the door is jammed!" Heinous shouted.

"Are you sure it's not locked?" Gemini asked.

"I know what it looks like when it's locked!" Heinous snapped, "Get me out of this car!" Exiting the car in a hurry, Gemini forgot or just didn't realise that it was resting atop another car and not on the ground. As a result, he stumbled and fell roughly onto the road. The slight delay the tumble caused seemed to irk Miss Heinous, as though he were deliberately lollygagging and not falling on his face, "Gemini!"

"Oh, uh coming!" Gemini called back as he pushed himself to his feet, and rushed around to the other side of the car. Once there, he forcefully yanked the door open, which turned out to actually be stuck. Unfortunately, Heinous didn't seem prepared for the door to open so suddenly, and wound up falling out of the car just as Gemini had. Landing directly on her face, she then got to her feet with an annoyed grunt. Heinous took out some of her frustration by repeatedly kicking the car, which only really served to hurt her foot.

"How is my hair?" Heinous asked once she calmed down, adjusting her hair slightly.

"Like you just came from the salon." Gemini said, ever quick to lay down some flattery. Plus, he wanted to get back on her good side.

"Filthy lies." Heinous said, unimpressed, "But I'll allow it." She then headed to the back seat where Rasticore's arm was kept. As she unbuckled the baby seat, she started talking to the arm, "Come now, Rasticore. There's my baby bounty hunter. You're growing back so fast. Yes, you are. Yes, you are."

If Rasticore had been able to hear her, he probably would have been _very_ uncomfortable.

Moving to the front of the car, Miss Heinous used the septarian's arm to pick up the chainsaw attached to the hood.

"Now we are prepared to wreak recrimination on our foes." Heinous said while smiling evilly.

"Yes. Recrim-mim-mim-ination!" Gemini stumbled over the word in his haste to agree. Miss Heinous shot him an annoyed glare before walking up to the front door of the Diaz house with the chainsaw. But before she could use it on the door, Gemini spoke up, "Um, milady. I thought we weren't going to do this until our backup arrives?" While he may not trust the man who agreed to help them, he also wasn't too keen on trying to attack Princess Marco with just the two of them.

"Ah yes, where is he? It's only a few minutes until we're suppose to meet." Heinous said, unable to comprehend the idea that not everyone arrives at least five minutes early to a meeting.

"Perhaps we should wait until he shows up?" Gemini suggested.

"If he doesn't arrive soon, we'll just have to proceed without him." Heinous grumbled. She was so close to finally getting her revenge, she wasn't going to let anything stop her.

Suddenly, to both their surprise, the front door to the house swung open. Standing in front of them was a middle aged woman with long brown hair. She looked between the pair with an air of slight confusion.

Now most people, even among the residents of Echo Creek, would probably be somewhat concerned at the sight of some weird goblinoid creature and a chainsaw wielding woman standing on their front porch. But the Diazes had grown used to bizarre and somewhat threatening people showing up to their house. A strange woman with a large spear had been coming around daily until recently, and a literal demon occasionally dropped by to hang out with their son. Also, they knew Janna, and compared to her, a woman with a chainsaw was downright tame.

"Can I help you?" Angie asked.

"Yes! Yes, you can." Heinous quickly responded before calming herself down, "Is this the residence of Princess Marco?"

"Oh, do you know Star and Marco?" Angie asked, mishearing the question and assuming Miss Heinous asked if this was where the princess **and** Marco lived.

"Yes, and it is most urgent that see her." Heinous said with a small but very malicious cackle.

"Well, they're not home right now. Oh, but you're more than welcome to wait for them to get back. Please come in, I'll make tea." Angie offered.

"Tea does sound lovely." Gemini said.

"I suppose we'll take you up on that offer." Heinous grumbled. She was less than happy that her revenge had been delayed.

"Excellent. Honey! We have guests!" Angie shouted into the house.

"Is it the Morrisons!?" A somewhat panicked Rafael responded from the kitchen. They weren't ready, the spinach puffs weren't done yet.

"No! It's-" Angie paused before turning back to the new house guests, "What did say your names were?"

"Miss Heinous." The ex-headmistress answered as she stepped into the house. While their taste in decor left much to be desired, the parents of Princess Marco didn't seem to share her horrible personality. Most likely, they simply lost control over their brat, as was the case for most of the parents who sent their children to Saint Olga's.

"Why don't you sit down why I get the tea ready." Angie motioned to some chairs set up around the coffee table in the living room.

"Thank you." Heinous said, sitting down. Once Angie left, she pulled out a pocket watch and checked the hour before scowling, "Where is he? It's nearly time."

Angie returned with Rafael and sat down on the couch across from the coffee table.

"The tea will be ready in just a minute." Rafael said.

"I must say, your home is lovely, milord and milady." Gemini commented.

"Yes, it is a rather unconventional domicile, but I suppose it's pleasant in its own way." Heinous added.

"Um, thank you?" Rafael replied.

"Miss Heinous was it? You said you needed to see Star and Marco?" Angie asked.

-000-

"Well, that's almost certainly not a good thing." Marco stated as both he and Star stared at the stacked cars sitting in front of his house.

"What'cha thinking? Night Creatures?" Star asked, eager to use the Morning Star Whip again.

"Probably not, it's the middle of the day after all." Marco responded. Looking around, he didn't see anything else amiss, "Maybe it was just a really weird car accident."

"If someone was a bad enough driver that they accidentally parked on top of another car, well I'd just be impressed." Star said with a small chuckle.

"Same. But let's be on the look out just in case." Marco said, heading towards the front door.

"You got it. Look out mode." Star got down on her stomach and started crawling across the front lawn, stopping every now and then to look around, or duck behind something. Marco, for his part, just walked up to the house.

It took longer than normal thanks to Star being in "look out mode" but they eventually reached the front door. Once Marco entered the living room, he saw his parents sitting at the coffee table along with two extra people. Miss Heinous whirled around at the sound of the door opening, and upon locking eyes with Marco, her face twisted into a furious scowl.

"You!" Heinous spat and pointed accusingly at him.

"You!" Marco said in response as he pointed at her in return, before leaning over to his best friend, "Star, who is she?"

"What!? You don't know- **You ruined my life!** " Heinous roared, shooting to a standing position and knocking over her chair in the process.

"Okay, but like, have we met?" Marco asked as he tried and failed to remember if he knew the older woman. If they had met before, it must have been before his sixteen years in Hekapoo's dimension.

"Marco, that's Miss Heinous. You know, from Saint O's?" Star said, a little surprised that he had forgotten.

"Oh, right, right." Marco said quickly. While he vaguely remembered Saint Olga's and had read about what happened in his diary, he had honestly forgotten what Heinous looked like. Now that he had a name to put the face, he actually started remember ex-headmistress a bit more, "I remember now, that was the first time I wore a dress."

"I can't believe you, you insufferable little-" Heinous ended her sentence with a series of strained noises, before forcing herself to calm down a little, "Well, while you may not remember me, I certainly remember you, Princess Marco. Even with your super-cute new haircut."

Marco had a sudden desire to change how he wore his hair.

"Okay, What is going on here?" Rafael asked, thoroughly confused. However, it seemed clear that Marco had done something to upset this nice old woman.

"She's evil." Marco said curtly, jerking a thumb towards Miss Heinous.

"Lies and slander! I was a well respected headmistress before you came along and turned Saint Olga's against me." Heinous objected. Marco gave her an unamused glare before turning to Star.

"Star?" He asked his bestie.

"Yeah, she's definitely evil." Star affirmed as she crossed her arms and nodded knowingly.

"See?" Marco said to his parents, before turning back Miss Heinous, "Now that that's cleared up, get out." He pointed to the front door with a glare.

"I'm not going anywhere until I receive justice for your crimes against me." Heinous scoffed, as she picked up her chair and sat back down. Both Angie and Rafael looked concerned by this statement.

"But if she doesn't leave-" Rafael started, and Angie continued, "-Then how are we gonna have dinner with-" Then they both finished, "The Morrisons?"

"The who?" Marco asked.

"The Morrisons are so cool." Angie said as she ran over to the mantle where a picture of these people was apparently sitting. Marco's confusion only grew, "We've been on the wait list to have them over for months."

"This dinner needs to be perfect. We can't mess it up." Rafael said.

"Th-that's what you're concerned about? Really?" Marco asked, utterly gobsmacked by his parents reaction.

"You're gonna resolve whatever issue you have with Miss Heinous right now." Angie sternly told her son.

" _Or_ , I could just chuck her out." Marco suggested.

"Marco! How could you suggest being so cruel to this poor old woman?" Rafael scolded, "Now sit down, so we can talk this out like respectable people."

With an agitated sigh, Marco complied and motioned for Star to join him on the couch. Rafael stayed with them to make sure they didn't get up to any funny business, while Angie went to finish getting the tea ready. Once she was done, she returned to the living room and handed Miss Heinous and Gemini a cup of tea each before joining the rest of her family on the couch.

"Thank you, your Highness." Heinous said, still under the impression that the Diazes were royalty. Gemini went to drink some of his tea, and nearly burned his tongue.

"What exactly is your issue with Marco?" Angie asks, because while she managed to pick up a bit of context from earlier she was still pretty unclear on the whole situation.

"Gemini." Heinous held out her hand and Gemini passed her a magic hand mirror, similar to Star's compact mirrors, just an older model. Turning it on, a slide show started as she narrated, "Once, I was the headmistress of St. Olga's, the most esteemed princess school in the multiverse. It was a wonderful place where delinquent princesses were taught manners and respect. Until one day, an insolent princess showed up and inspired all the students to rebel against their elders who knew better. Princess Marco left, but the school was never the same. They made her the face of a revolution, even inspiring merchandise, influencing the next generation of young princesses with her devious ways."

"Wait a minute. You have merchandise?" Star asked turning to Marco.

"Oh, that reminds me. I need talk to them about some of products they're putting my face on." Marco said, recalling his conversation with Tom's father and the fact that Princess Marco body pillows were apparently a thing.

" _As I was saying_ , my students lost all respect for authority. Soon, they were cutting classes just to party, even inviting the boys from the neighboring prince reform school. They threw me out! And now, I live in a car." Heinous said as she turned off the mirror and handed it back to Gemini, attempting to look as pitiable as possible. And sadly, Angie and Rafael seemed to fall for it. Gemini placed a hand on her shoulder in an attempt at comforting her, but Miss Heinous jerked away from his grasp, "Don't touch me!" She then turned back to the Diazes, "And it's all thanks to Princess Marco and her little sidekick, Princess Butterfly!"

"Marco, is this all true?" Angie asked in the same way one might ask their child if they really shoplifted after a police officer accused them of doing so.

"Okay, yeah, I overthrew a cruel dictator who was abusing and brainwashing children. Sue me." Marco said, still not quite believing the fact that they were wasting their time listening to this woman.

"And they blew up my bodyguard!" Heinous shouted, holding up Rasticore's arm.

"Okay, I don't remember doing that at all." Marco said honestly, "Star?"

"Yeah, I'm drawing a blank on that one too." Star answered. The arms suddenly moved, and everyone on the couch recoiled slightly in surprise, "Wait, is that thing still alive?"

"Well, he's part lizard, so his whole body will grow back soon. And then he'll be a big boy, won't you, sweetie?" Heinous devolved into baby talk and kissed the severed arm tenderly. While the knowledge that she wasn't in fact carrying around the dead limb of her boyfriend(?) like a serial killer made things slightly less creepy, her kissing the arm quickly brought things back up to their previous creep level. To make things even weirder, Gemini looked to be jealous of the appendage.

"So, how shall we proceed, Miss Heinous?" Angie asked, desperate to get things back on topic and away from _that_.

"With a punishment commensurate with the crime. How about we annihilate her and display her skeleton as a warning against any further insurrection?" Heinous suggested with a demonic smile.

"How about I slit open your belly and hang by your own intestines." Marco countered, wanting more than anything to literally kick her out of his house right now.

" _Marco_!" Both his parents yell at once, shocked.

"What? I'm not going to be polite to her when she wants to _kill_ me!" Marco said defensively.

Miss Heinous opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by the sudden sound of music.

" _I'll be the round about_

 _The words will make you out 'n' out_ "

The song seemed to be coming from the now vibrating magic mirror Gemini was holding. Heinous snatched it out of his hand and tapped the screen, answering the call.

"It's about time you called. Where are you!?" Heinous yelled at the screen, "Princess Marco is right here and you're late!"

Suddenly, everything froze. Miss Heinous stopped moving mid sentence, her mouth half open. Everyone in the room was as still as a statue. Everyone except Marco. Immediately, he knew what was going on. Time had slowed to a stopped. Galamoth's soul allowed him to recognise areas where time isn't flowing properly, and prevented him from being affected by it. Jumping off the couch, he steeled himself for whatever stopped time to show up. He didn't have to wait very long, because the front window exploded inward as a large figure crashed through it. Shards of glass slowed down and stopped in midair.

The intruder was large, almost seven feet tall and had a heavily muscular body with light blue skin and spiky orange hair that stuck straight up. In the place of fingers, the demon instead had knife-like talons. His clothing was rather bizarre, as he was wearing turquoise chaps and a skintight purple leotard along with gold armbands and bracelets.

The first thing he did upon entering the house was take out a dagger and hurl it at Marco. The knife stopped about a foot away from his face. Marco was careful not to move and let the demon know that the time stop hadn't affected him. He felt time start to return to normal speed, and his hand shot out to grab the dagger before it could stab into his face. While he started moving slightly before the time stop ended, the demon didn't seem notice, and time had already resumed by the time Marco actually caught the knife. In the distance there was the sound of electricity as the alchemical barrier tried to react to the presence of a Night Creature that had already moved through it.

"Sorry I'm late, I lost track of time." The time stopper said in a deep voice. If he was bothered or surprised by his knife throw failing, then he didn't show it.

"Zephyr! About time you showed up. Quickly now, destroy her!" Heinous shouted.

Not bothering with the time stop this time, Zephyr threw another dagger at Marco. The boy responded by throwing the knife he had caught and the two blades collided in midair before clattering to the ground. Without wasting a second, Marco charged at Zephyr and the demon decided to do the same. Zephyr's reach was larger than Marco's and he swung at the boy with his clawed hand, however, Marco slide underneath the swing and kicked upwards, planting his foot in the demon's stomach. The Night Creature flew back a few feet before landing nimbly like a cat, never facing away from his opponent.

"Time, **stop!** " Zephyr yelled out. Time obeyed his command and everything froze once more, Marco making sure to hold still as well. Leaping into the air, Zephyr soared over Marco's head, and lobbed several knives at him as he did. Once the demon landed, time started again and the daggers sped towards Marco. He dashed backwards out of their path and the blades embedded harmlessly into the ground. Unfortunately, he got within Zephyr's reach and was only barely able to jump to the side to avoid being cut in half by the demon's talons, though he still received a shallow cut along his arm.

Before Zephyr could press the attack, a magical blast hit him in the back. He turned around with a roundhouse kick that Star was fortunately able to duck underneath. She responded with a Rainbow Fist Punch to his face, and he staggered back slightly, but was otherwise unharmed. As much as Star wanted to just hit the demon with the Morning Star Whip, doing so in such a confined space would be a terrible idea. The resulting explosion would completely destroy the living room and possibly bring down the house. Instead, she'd have to use her normal spells, which sadly didn't quite pack the punch she needed to fight such a Night Creature.

After being hit by the spell, Zephyr's form began to waver like a desert mirage. Taking advantage of the demons's distracted state, Marco jumped at him from behind and aimed a kick at Zephyr's head. Just as it's about to land however, time suddenly stopped again, and this time Marco couldn't pretend to be frozen. The blow connected with the demon's head and he was sent flying across the room. In a state of shock Zephyr was unable to catch himself and crashed into the fireplace. He looked up at Marco just as the boy landed, surprise written clearly on his face before being replaced with anger.

"So, you can move within my world of stopped time." Zephyr growled. His face shifted to smug contempt, "And yet you failed to makes good use of it, utter fool. While time was stopped you could have used your magic powers against me to your heart's content." Marco's eyes widened in shock, "Yes, that's right Marco. I know all about your abilities. And I know you won't risk using them in front of these people. What? Afraid of what they might do when they learn the truth about you?"

Before Marco had a chance to respond, time began to flow again. The brick fireplace behind Zephyr suddenly shattered from the delayed impact of when he slammed into it in frozen time, and the wall collapsed along with it. Star blinked in confusion. To her, Marco and Zephyr suddenly teleported to new locations, and the wall just exploded for no reason. She didn't have time to question it though, as the demon suddenly charged forward back into the fray. He slashed at Marco again and the boy jumped backwards to avoid the attack, but Zephyr's leg lashed out and caught Marco in the stomach. He was thrown backwards into the air and smashed through the railings on the stairs, before coming to stop upon hitting the wall.

"Strawberry Annihilation!" Star fired the spell at Zephyr, but he simply back flipped over it. Before landing, the demon took out three knives and threw them at Star. She managed to dodge all of them, but was distracted when Zephyr suddenly dashed forward and swiped at her with his claws. Unable to dodge, Star brought up her wand to block the strike. The blow landed with enough force that it nearly knocked the wand out of her hands, and her knees buckled under its wight. Then, before she could recover, Zephyr kicked Star in the side and she felt some of her ribs crack. She slammed into the floor, which shattered under the impact.

Whirling around, Zephyr threw another dagger at Marco, who had been charging at him. He caught the knife, and then used it to parry another slash from Zephyr's talons. With his other hand, Marco punched the demon in the face. Zephyr's retaliation came immediately, and his foot kicked out and hit Marco in the leg. As the boy stumbled backwards from the blow, the demon pulled his arm back to try and slice him again.

"Raspberry Ribbon Lasso!" Suddenly, ropes made of magic wrapped around Zephyr's arm, halting his attack. Looking back, he saw that the magic lasso came out of the bell of Star's wand. He grabbed onto the rope with his other hand, and gave a sharp tug on the spell.

"Useless! Useless! Useless!" Zephyr yelled maniacally, as Star was yanked forward off her feet. He swung her around and threw her directly at Marco. When the two collided with each other, Star's spell ended and they both were thrown back into the wall.

Marco shoved Star out of the way as Zephyr leaped at them and brought his leg down on the boy. Marco managed to raise his arms to block the blow, but the force caused the ground underneath him to crater. Adjusting his arm, Marco managed to grab onto the demon's leg, and threw him to the ground. Zephyr kicked with his other leg, landing a clean blow to Marco's chest, breaking a few of the boy's ribs, and forcing him to let go of the demon's leg. Just as the Night Creature rose to a standing position, Star smashed him over the back of the head with her wand. He let out a noise of pain before backhanding the princess across the room. She landed on the coffee table, shattering it.

By now, Miss Heinous and Gemini, along with Marco's parents, had retreated into the kitchen in order to avoid getting caught up in the fight. While Heinous watched with glee as Zephyr attacked the two teens, Angie and Rafael were almost frozen with fear and horror at the scene unfolding before them.

Marco hit the ground and Zephyr pounced upon him. The demon jabbed his hand forward, looking to impale the boy with his talons. Marco's hands shot out and grabbed the blade-like claws. Although he sliced his palms and fingers open, he was able to stop the attack just before the talons stabbed into his chest. In response, Zephyr leaned forward, putting more weight and strength into sinking his claws into Marco's flesh. Despite the boy's best efforts, the sharpened points inched closer and closer to his body.

"Mega Narwhal Blast!" From her position in front of the entrance to the kitchen, Star fired a massive blast of several large narwhals at Zephyr.

"Once more. **Time Stop!** " As everything froze, Zephyr leapt off of Marco and out of the Narwhal Blast's path. The demon then took out a plethora of knives and hurled them at Star, all of the blades slowing to a stop a foot or two away from her.

Marco's eyes widened in horror. He threw himself towards Star, desperate to reach her before time resumed. There's no way she'd be able to avoid those knives when she wasn't expecting them and when they were so close. Tearing up the ground from how fast he was moving, Marco reached her just as time returned to its normal speed. He tackled her to the ground, and two of the daggers meant for her stabbed themselves in his arm and leg instead. Sadly, he wasn't able to protect her from all of them, and one of the blades sunk into Star's shoulder. As they both hit the ground, they heard a scream of pain. Marco looked up...

...And saw his mother on her knees with a dagger embedded in her arm.

Marco ripped the knife out of his arm and spun around as Zephyr tried to bring his talons down on him. With the knife, Marco parried the blow, knocking it aside, his strength fueled by anger. Zephyr was open now, and Marco conjured a dagger of his own and threw it. The blade stabbed straight into the demon's throat, and he stumbled back. Gurgling, Zephyr tried and failed to say something through the blood in his mouth and windpipe. Taking a step forward, Marco called forth the magic of the Balor's soul, and power flowed into his arm. His fist rocketed forward, and collided with Zephyr with the force of an exploding bomb. The demon's ribs and spine splintered from the blow, before he shot backwards like an artillery shell.

-000-

A police officer looked at Heinous' car with a bemused expression on his face. When he got a call about a double parked car, he hadn't been expecting two cars literally parked in the same spot. Honestly, he wasn't even sure if there was a law being violated her since the top car's wheels weren't even on the ground. If you hadn't noticed by now, he wasn't a very good cop.

He decided to ask around, maybe a lawyer or judge lived nearby and could clear this up for him. Starting with the house directly in front of the two cars, he began walking to the front door when he heard what sounded like people shouting. Suddenly, the front door exploded outwards as something flew out of the house at high speeds. The unidentified projectile collided with the officer's police cruiser and the car was thrown back with it. Both the vehicle and the projectile traveled across the street before slamming into yet another automobile sitting in a driveway on the other side of the road, at which point both cars exploded violently.

A figure walked out of the flaming wreckage before slumping on to their knees. Slowly they brought a hand to their throat and pulled out a knife that been lodged there. The officer watched them rise to their feet, and promptly turned around and ran away, deciding he wasn't getting paid to deal with this.

Taking groggy steps forward, Zephyr raised a clawed hand to try and keep the sun off him. As far as Night Creatures were concerned, the demon wasn't badly affected by it. It didn't turn him to dust or cause any sort of physical harm. But its light disoriented him horribly, making him feel tired and extremely ill. The bright midday sun made him feel far worse than any of the injuries he had sustained. He tried to walk back to the Diaz house, but instead fell forward onto the hot road the minute he took a step forward.

-000-

"Um, milady? I think we should go." Gemini said quietly.

"Yes, you're probably correct." Heinous agreed, also keeping her voice down.

The two of them, along with everyone else in the room, stared at Princess Marco with wide eyes. The princess was panting heavily, and the fist she punched Zephyr with was freaking smoking. Slowly, so as not to attract attention, Miss Heinous and Gemini began creeping towards the nearest exit. Heinous had never realised just how dangerous Princess Marco actually was before, having only thought of her as a troublesome brat. Now however... well, let's just say that Heinous was beginning to rethink her assumption that the two princesses had used some form of underhanded trickery to destroy her beloved Rasitcore (Though in reality neither Marco or Star were responsible).

Only a few seconds after they started inching away, Heinous and Gemini's luck ran dry. Marco's head snapped in their direction and he reached them less than a second later and slammed Miss Heinous into the wall. His right hand was wrapped around her throat, keeping her pinned against the wall, while he still held onto the knife he had pulled out of his arm earlier with his other hand. The ex-headmistress couldn't help but eye the dagger in fear.

"G-Gemini." Heinous choked out, finding it hard to breath through Marco's grip.

"Milady!" Gemini's voice was filled with concern. But before the small man could do anything, Marco punted him across the room with a kick, his hate-filled glare never once leaving Heinous. She tried to pry his hand away from her throat, but her attempts only resulted in his hand choking her tighter, cutting off her airflow entirely.

Heinous had been afraid plenty of times before, afraid of failing in her duties, afraid of her robotic mother, Saint Olga. But she had never been afraid like this. This was a very primal fear, fear in the face of death. There was no doubt in her mind right now, Marco was going to kill her.

Breathing heavily, Marco's left hand began to shake. He was angry. This woman had broken into his house, no, she had tricked his parents into letting her in and then used their kindness to attack him. As a result, both his mother and Star were hurt. And Heinous didn't give a _damn_ that his parents had been caught in the crossfire of whatever feud she had with him. He was furious beyond words. Rarely did he ever feel this much anger, but when he did someone usually wound up dead.

With ever growing fear and desperation, Heinous kicked Marco in the leg, the one that still had a knife lodged in it, in a last desperate attempt to escape. Instead, Marco responded by drawing the dagger he was holding back, switching to holding it reverse grip as he did so. Before he could bring it down on her however, three new blades soared through the air and stabbed into Marco's back. Then before he had a chance to react, Zephyr delivered a flying roundhouse kick to the side of the boy's head, knocking him away. Coughing, Heinous collapsed to the ground.

No one had even noticed Zephyr enter the house until now, everyone had been so focused on Marco and Miss Heinous. Also, he had moved so quickly that the time between entering the house, throwing the knives, and attacking Marco was less than a second. With Marco a safe distance away, the demon stuck out his pinky finger and used it to cut open a portal. Grabbing both Heinous and Gemini, who had waddled back towards them, Zephyr tossed the two of them through the tear in the fabric of space. Before he himself went through, he whistled and all the various knives that had been scattered about over the course of the battle floated back to him, including the ones currently stuck in people. Star screamed in pain as the dagger was roughly pulled out of her shoulder and she heard Angie cry out as well, Marco had been in the middle of pushing himself to his feet when it happened, and almost collapsed back to ground. Once all the knives had returned to Zephyr he turned around and walked towards the portal.

" **NOOO!** " The demon had only just stuck his foot through when Marco shouted. Looking over his shoulder, Zephyr saw the boy charging towards him, and smirked as their eyes met, before stepping though fully. The portal shrank and closed just as Marco reached it. He collapsed to his knees partly out of frustration, but mostly due to exhaustion and his injuries. Screaming, he tried to relieve some of his frustration by the punching the already destroyed ground, but it didn't help. Angry thoughts buzzed through his head, some aimed at Heinous and Zephyr, but now that they were gone most of his rage was directed instead at himself. He failed to stop them from escaping, and he failed to protect his family and Star.

"Marco." Star whispered, but it was enough to snap him out of his thoughts. Turning to look at her, he was relieved to see that she seemed mostly okay. Even if she was clutching her bleeding shoulder, she was able to stand. But then he looked at her face. There was an expression there that he couldn't quite place, and there was something about it that worried him.

Then he turned suddenly to look at his parents, he needed to see if they were okay. They as well had that expression, only now Marco was beginning to think he knew what it was.

Were they afraid? But why? Zephyr and Heinous were gone. And then he noticed, they were all staring at _him_.

Realisation crashed over him like a wave, pulling him under and drowning him. He remembered what had just happened, what he had just done. What he tried to do.

Why wouldn't they be afraid? They had just seen him for who he really was. The mask of 'old Marco' cracked and shattered, and he had showed them what lied beneath it. How he tried to kill someone in cold blood.

Suddenly, Marco needed to leave, to be anywhere but here, under the fearful gazes of the people he cared about. Reaching into this pocket, he pulled out his scissors and sliced open a portal to escape.

"Marco!" Star yelled, running towards him. But it was too late, both he and the portal were gone.

-000-

"Why did you run!? You could have eradicated Princess Marco right then and there!" Heinous shouted at Zephyr. Ever since they had escaped she had been yelling non-stop, furious that her plans had been foiled. Mostly, she had screaming at Zephyr, complaining about everything from his initial lateness to his outfit, and had decided that all of it was in some way responsible for things going wrong. By now, he was sick of it, and it took every once of his willpower to not turn her into a knife block. Eventually, she took a calming breath, "You know what, though I am loathe to admit it, Gemini you were right about him. This man can obviously not be trusted." She turned back to Zephyr, "Away with you. I don't want you in my presence any longer."

"That really isn't your decision to make." Zephyr said calmly, to which Miss Heinous responded with an offended scoff.

"Now that's enough, you ruffian!" Gemini stomped towards the demon. He had never liked Zephyr but had been willing to put up with him because Heinous wanted him to. Now that his lady wanted him gone, and the demon was being rude to her, Gemini was finally going to give him a piece of his mind, "You have no right talking like to-"

The sentence went unfinished as he suddenly fell apart, cut into several small pieces. Watching the various bits and parts of Gemini scatter across the floor, Zephyr more than a little disappointed that the dwarf had been robotic. The lack of blood diminished the display in his mind.

Heinous froze, eyes going wide with shock and terror. Dragging them away from Gemini's destroyed body, she forced herself to look at Zephyr. Only to find that he wasn't there anymore. Before she could look for him or wonder where he went, a hand cupped her face from behind.

"You don't have to be afraid. I have no plans to harm you. After all, you might prove to be very useful." Zephyr whispered softly in her ear as he rubbed her cheek. When he removed his hand, he had wiped away the concealer she had been wearing, revealing a club shaped cheek mark on Heinous' face. Zephyr smiled at the sight of it.

Heinous remained completely frozen, as she came to horrifying realisation that perhaps Marco wasn't the most terrifying thing she had encountered today.

* * *

 **Kind of a short chapter this time around, shorter than I was expecting honestly. But, I think it left a pretty big impact.**

 **Jojo references galore! Can you honestly blame me though when Zephyr is literally a Dio expy? Actually, I've been planning this chapter for a while, and I think it's honestly the reason I was able to finish _Stardust Crusaders_. Because I did not care for that part at all. I'm really glad I finished it though, because _Diamond is Unbreakable_ was amazing and _Vento Aureo_ has been quite enjoyable. I should probably get around to reading the Manga soon.**

 **Originally, when Zephyr touched Heinous' cheek mark, he was also going to touch her tail. But then I remembered where on her body said tail is located, and decided I was _not_ going to write that. That part was already creepy enough.**

 **The next chapter is probably going to have some angst. Which I am very very nervous about trying to write.**


End file.
